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The box moved slowly through the water 



THE MILLERS 
AND THEIR PLAYMATES 


BY 

Clara Dillingham Pierson 

AUTHOR OF “three LITTLE MILLERS,” “ THE MILLERS AT PENCROFT,” 

“among the meadow people,” etc. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 Whst Twenty-third Street 



LIBltAKVof CONGRESS 
Two CwtK RtoNvod 

SEF^ 8 



Copyright, 1907 

BY 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


Published, September, 1907 



Cbe Tftnlcfeerbocftcr B>rc 05 , IRew ffietTs 


To MY Little Friend 

KATHRINE S. JOHNSTON 

* • 

This Book is Affectionately Dedicated 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Breaking Ground for the New House . 

I 

Building the Playhouse 


. 14 

The Playhouse Party 


• 35 

Smoking 


. 56 

A Wedding 

• > * • 

• 73 

Hallowe’en 


. 90 

Lucinda 


. Ill 

Grandparents . 


. 129 

Helen Is III 


• 147 

Catching on Bobs and what Came of it . 

. 165 

Jack Writes a Story 


. 183 

Easter Eggs 


. 198 

High Water 


. 214 

The Play . 


. 234 

The Wanderers 


• 254 

Pets .... 


• 274 

The Closing of School 


. 291 

The Journey North . 


. 310 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Box Moved Slowly through the Water . ^ 

Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

Helen Dug THE Cellar 20/ 

Kindly Fill the Kettle, Mr. Miller . . 40 

They Started toward Home on the Run . . 66-'" 

Maggie Was the Chief Artist . . . . 94 

Helen Rode Slowly up and down the Sidewalk 140 ^ 


V 


THE MILLERS AND THEIR 
PLAYMATES. 


CHAPTER I 


BREAKING GROUND FOR THE NEW HOUSE 



HE fleecy clouds in the eastern sky were 


* beginning to turn rosy with the first 
glow of the rising sun when Mr. Miller stole 
softly into the room where twelve-year-old 
Ralph and nine-year-old Jack were sleeping. 

“Wake up, my sons,” he said, rubbing 
and pinching their cheeks. “Wake up 
quietly. 1 have a surprise planned for to- 
day, so awaken quickly.” 

At the word ‘ ‘ surprise ” both boys sat 
bolt upright, Ralph opening first one eye 
and then the other, and Jack not trying to 


2 The Millers and Their Playmates 

open either, but turning his head from side 
to side like a tiny kitten whose eyes have 
not yet opened. Seven-year-old Helen tip- 
toed through the open door-way, her fingers 
busily working at the buttons of her little 
white frock. “Wake up, boys,” she said. 
“We’re going to all s’prise Mother, and 
Father says we have to get up early in the 
morning to do that.” 

“ Wha-wha-what is the s’prise ? ” asked 
Ralph, trying to rub his eyes open. 

“ B’leeve 1 know,” said Jack, crawling 
toward the edge of the bed. “It’s some- 
thing about the new house.” 

“You are a good guesser !” exclaimed 
Mr. Miller. “ You see it is just fifteen years 
ago that Mother and 1 were married, and 1 
want her to turn the first earth for the new 
cellar to-day. The men and the teams will 
be here at seven and we must do our part 
before they come. Dress quickly and then 
you shall awaken Mother and give her a new 
spade to use. It is all ready down-stairs.” 

Nobody had to rub his eyes open after 


Breaking Ground for the New House 3 

that. They just popped open of themselves 
like those of a doll when you raise her head. 
Mr. Miller followed Helen back to her room 
to help her comb her hair, and both of them 
laughed to hear the sounds of soft scram- 
bling in the boys’ quarters. In about ten 
minutes all four were ready to tiptoe down 
to Mrs. Miller’s room. The new spade had 
two dates painted on the handle, the date 
of the wedding and that of the fifteenth 
anniversary. First they rapped on the door 
softly, then more and more loudly, until 
Mrs. Miller awakened from her dream and 
called, “ Come in.” 

“ Good morning ! Wish you many happy 
returns of the day 1 ” cried the boys, while 
Helen, much too excited to think straight, 
shouted, “ I wish you Merry Christmas ! ” 

Then they carried the spade in and gave 
it to her, Mr. Miller explaining his little plan 
while she examined it. A few minutes later 
the children went across the street with 
their father to the ground where the new 
house was to stand and cleared a small spot 


4 The Millers and Their Playmates 

in the centre from weeds and stubble. “I 
wish she ’d hurry,” said Ralph. “ It seems 
to me 1 Ve been up two hours already.” 

“Did you tell Aurelia to come?” asked 
Jack, for to him Aurelia seemed quite as 
much a member of the family as he himself. 

“No,” said Mr. Miller. “ I meant to, and 
forgot it. She is especially busy about 
breakfast this morning, but 1 think you 
might better ask her to come over for just a 
few minutes when Mother does.” 

The children raced back to the house with 
the message and soon returned with Mrs. 
Miller and Aurelia, the latter in her workgown 
and kitchen apron, and with a dab of flour on 
one cheek which made her look very queer 
indeed. Mr. Miller, who had brought over the 
spade, handed it to his wife with a low bow. 
“You are to have the first turn,” he said. 

Now Mrs. Miller was a decidedly clever 
woman, but she had never used a spade in 
her life, and it wabbled around in the fun- 
niest way imaginable when she tried to 
force it into the earth. Ralph steadied her 


Breaking Ground for the New House 5 

as she threw her weight on it. Jack put 
both hands on the handle to steady that, 
and Helen squatted down on the dewy 
ground to get a clear view of what was hap- 
pening. At last everybody decided that it 
had gone deep enough, and then the earth 
was pried up and thrown to one side.” 
“Where shall 1 put it?” Mrs. Miller 
asked, and then, having the spot pointed 
out to her, she used all her muscle and 
threw it — in quite another direction ! 

Mr. Miller took his turn and sent a huge 
spadeful flying through the air to precisely 
the spot he had chosen. Ralph, jack, and 
Helen followed in order with a great deal of 
fun and frolic, and then Aurelia declared that 
she must do her share and get back to her 
kitchen. “Sakes alive!” she said, “the 
muffins I left bakin’ will be blacker ’n this 
earth if 1 don’t hurry, and sence this is a 
sort 0 ’ weddin’ breakfast things ought to be 
did right. Ralph, you run over an’ take the 
coffee-pot off ’n the range, please.” 

Ralph started at once, but he lingered 


6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

along, glancing back over his shoulder to 
see Aurelia work. She had known what it 
was to spade her mother’s garden when she 
was a girl, and she handled the tool like a 
man. Ralph had stopped altogether a few 
feet away, and stood with his hands in his 
pockets and his mouth open. Aurelia 
swung the spadeful of earth back, and then, 
before Ralph realized what she meant to do, 
it came flying through the air straight toward 
him. He turned and ran like a frightened 
colt, and Aurelia, throwing down the spade, 
raced with him toward the house, her 
gingham apron fluttering out to one side and 
her coil of gray hair loosening as she ran. 

Nebuchadnezzar, the cat, had been picking 
his way over to where his mistress stood, 
and now leaped to one side to let Ralph and 
Aurelia pass. Mr. and Mrs. Miller walked 
around to look at the different marking 
stakes, while Jack and Helen bent over to 
pick some morning-glories which were 
blooming in the stubble of the old garden. 
When the last blossom was plucked they 


Breaking Ground for the New House 7 

saw that Nebuchadnezzar was rolling over 
and over in the freshly turned earth, hitting 
the lumps here and there with his pretty 
paws and making queer little sounds of per- 
fect happiness. 

“Father! Look at this! ’’cried Jack. “Neb 
is taking his turn too. Isn’t that a joke 1 ” 

“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Miller. 
“ Cats care more about their homes than any 
other animals, and Neb’s home is always 
with us, so why shouldn’t he ?” 

“ Hello, jack! Goingfishing?” cried Patsy 
Flannigan from the walk. 

“No. Going to school. What made you 
think that ? ” 

“ Digging bait, ain’t you — are you not ?” 
asked Patsy, who was struggling hard to 
speak correctly. 

“ Bait ? No,” replied jack. “ You see my 
father and mother were married just fifteen 
years ago to-day, so we ’re sort of celebrating. 
We got up early so as to break the ground 
for our new home before the men come. 
Mother dug the first spadeful and Father the 


8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

next, then we children and Aurelia and Neb, 
only he dug with paws instead of a spade. 
Father keeps calling Mother ‘the bride,’ and 
Aurelia ’s going to give us an extra sort of 
breakfast, and Mother ’s going to put on her 
wedding dress at supper-time, and Father ’s 
going to try to put on his wedding suit, only 
he ’s fatter than he used to be, and maybe 
he can’t, after all. You know it ’s always 
sort of special when folks have been married 
fifteen years, just as it is when they ’ve been 
married five or ten.” 

“Special how?” asked Helen, who had 
not quite understood it all. 

“ Oh, there ’s a special sort of thing for 
that day. It ’s wood for five years, and tin 
for ten, and glass for fifteen. That ’s the kind 
of wedding present to give them then. 1 ’m 
going to buy something on my way to school. 
You see I didn’t find out about it ahead.” 

“ I wish 1 had — ” began Patsy, but just 
then Mrs. Miller called “Breakfast!^’ from 
across the street, so his sentence was not 
finished. The Millers hurried off to the 


Breaking Ground for the New House 9 

“extra” breakfast, and then watched the 
men and teams at work on the new cellar 
until the second bell for school was ringing, 
and they had to go. 

There was great excitement among the pu- 
pilsof several grades that morning. Ralph and 
Jack could not find out the reason. Often one 
of them would walk up to a group of whisper- 
ing children, only to heara warning “ Sh-h !” 
and find that they were not wanted. Yet they 
were kindly treated, for jack was presented 
with a top, a half stick of licorice, and an old 
baseball before noon, while Ralph received a 
broken-bladed knife and a wad of red cord. 

After dinner it was just the same, only 
worse, for the very children whom the boys 
knew best kept handing money to Patsy 
Flannigan, who was also permitted by his 
teacher to visit the room where Janice Field 
and Sally James were. 

At recess Patsy consulted the rest and 
then invited Ralph and Jack into a corner, 
whispering close to their ears and then say- 
ing out loud, “Now don’t you let on ! ” 


lo The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ We won’t,” declared Ralph. “ But may 
we tell Helen ? ” 

“ If she won’t let on,” said Patsy. 

“ She won’t,” said Ralph, “ 1 make her say 
‘Truly, truly, black and bluely’ first and 
then she is always all right.” 

The Millers had their supper at six, and 
Mrs. Miller, in her pretty, old-fashioned wed- 
ding gown, was just passing tiny scraps of 
her fifteen-year-old wedding cake at the 
close of the meal, when the door-bell rang 
and a queer sort of giggling sound came 
from beyond the closed door. 

“May 1 go, please?” cried each of the 
three children. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Miller. 

Through the quickly-opened door came 
all the members of the Saturday Club, the 
children’s natural history society, which 
Mrs. Miller had started two years before, and 
which Professor Harding had also helped 
along. All the children wore their best 
clothing. Patsy carried a flat, round parcel, 
Maggie Flynn a long and slender one, and 


Breaking Ground for the New House 1 1 

Bertha Clarke, who was the youngest 
member of the club, had a beautiful bouquet 
of white cosmos in her two hands. 

Mr. Miller knew in a minute what it all 
meant. In fact, he had rather suspected 
some surprise from the way his children had 
acted at the table. “Come right into the 
sitting-room,” he said heartily. “ I declare, 
this looks to me like a club meeting 1 ” 

“ Won’t you take off your wraps ? “added 
Mrs. Miller, who had followed her husband in. 

“No, thank you,” said the children. Mag- 
gie and Patsy stepped in front of the rest. 

“ We came to congratulate you on your 
crystal wedding,” said Patsy, who had been 
advised by Professor Harding about what to 
say, “and to bring you both a gift from the 
Saturday Club, with our love.” He put his 
package into Mr. Miller’s hands and said, 
“ Please open it now.” 

Mr. Miller did so and found a circular 
mirror to lay in the middle of the dining 
table. He held it flat and told Mrs. Miller 
to look at it. Then Maggie spoke. 


1 2 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“This goes with it,” she said and 
handed Mrs. Miller her package. Mrs. 
Miller opened it and found a pretty lit- 
tle glass vase, which she set on the 
mirror. 

“And Mamma sent these,” added Bertha 
Clarke, handing Mrs. Miller the flowers. 
“ She said I was to tell you that they came 
from a club mother.” 

The flowers were put into the vase, which 
Helen filled with water, and then Mr. Miller 
made a little speech of thanks, while Mrs. 
Miller looked at the pretty gifts as they sat 
on the table. 

The children would have left at once after 
presenting their gifts, had not Mrs. Miller 
begged them to stay at least a quarter of an 
hour. Ralph, jack, and Helen were sent with 
messages to Aurelia and soon returned with 
trays in their hands, passing tiny glasses of 
sweet cider, square pieces of the new white 
cake which Aurelia called “ the bride’s loaf,” 
and last and best of all tiny pieces of the 
original dark wedding cake, pieces about as 


Breaking Ground for the New House 13 


big as dice, which the children ate with a 
sort of solemn joy. 

Then they arose, having been advised by 
Professor Hardy not to remain long, shook 
hands with Mr. and Mrs. Miller, and went 
home. As soon as they were outside the 
door Ben Stuart and Sammy Robinson began 
joking Patsy. “ Aha ! ” they said, “did 
say ‘love,’ didn’t you, in your speech? 
Thought you told the Prof, you would n’t ! 
Thought you said you were going to say 
‘greetings ’ instead.” 

“ What made you change, Patsy ? ” asked 
Maggie. “ I liked it best this way, though.’ 

“What made me change?” repeated 
Patsy. “Sure, it just slid out without me 
thinking.” 

“Wasn’t that dress a beauty, though? 
I never saw her all fixed up before.” 

“She’s a peach,” said the slangy Ben 
Stuart. 

“ You bet she is ! ” said the other boys. 

And the girls? Well, they did not say 
much, but they thought a good deal. 


CHAPTER II 

BUILDING THE PLAYHOUSE 

^ HAT was a most exciting October for the 
* three little Millers. There was so 
much to see and so much to do that jack 
thought it was really very hard to have to go 
to school. He went every day, however, 
and did not once pretend to be ill, as you re- 
member he had done when smaller. First 
there was that interesting procession of teams 
and drays passing down into one end of the 
new cellar and up at the other, carrying a 
load of earth each time to be dumped on the 
big pile in the back yard. 

Then there were the loads of stone to 
watch, as they were slowly thrown off in 
the front yard. It was interesting to climb 
around on the pile in the sunshine, or on a 
still day to find some cubby in the pile and 
curl up there with the sun-warmed stones 


14 


Building the Playhouse 15 

sending out their heat to the lazy and com- 
fortable child in the cubby. Neb found out 
how comfortable it was and often sat on the 
top of the heap with his feet tucked under 
him and his tail neatly folded around 
them. 

And when the masons were breaking the 
stones, all the children began collections of 
the pieces. To get the whitest white piece 
and the reddest red piece took time, and 
then there were other colors and interesting 
speckled sorts. Once Helen felt perfectly 
sure that she had found bits of gold in a 
speckled piece, and ran in great excitement 
to her father. 

“ Do see,” she cried, “it shines just like 
my ring Grandmother gave me. Now 
won’t we all be rich?” 

“It is pretty,” he said, “very pretty in- 
deed. But why do you want to be rich ? ” 

“So’s to have more money, of course,” 
said Helen. 

“ And why do you need more money ?” 
he asked. “Are you hungry, or poorly 


1 6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

dressed, or sick and unable to pay for 
medicine ?” 

“ No-o,” said Helen, who had an idea that 
he was making fun of her. “ 1 guess 1 just 
wanted it so 1 could sit around and say ‘ I’m 
rich, 1 ’m rich, 1 ’m just richer ’n mud ! ’ ” 

Then they both laughed and laughed and 
laughed, and Mr. Miller said: “ Well, this is 
not gold. 1 think these shining bits are 
called iron pyrites. But 1 see no reason why 
you should not sit around and say that you 
are rich, if you would enjoy doing so. You 
are really very rich, you know, in other 
things besides money. Only you ought 
not to let people hear you, for they might 
misunderstand and think you meant money, 
and that you were lying. Say it to your- 
self and Nebuchadnezzar.” 

“ All right,” she replied with a giggle. “ 1 
guess it won’t hurt him any.” 

It was while she was following this ad- 
vice that it occurred to her to want a play- 
house. That was one thing she had not, 
and she spoke of it to her brothers. 


Building the Playhouse 17 

“ We could build one all right, if we only 
had the boards and stuff, ’’said Ralph. “Jack, 
you ask Father if he can ’t give us some.” 

“ All right,” said jack, “ 1 ’ll ask him after 
supper.” 

Mr. Miller thought it a good idea, told 
them where they might build it in the back 
yard, and promised that when the family 
moved to the new place the playhouse 
should go too. An old lumber pile was 
given to them and a pound of nails apiece as 
a beginning. “You must use your own 
tools,” said Mr. Miller, “and buy all your 
nails after these are gone.” 

“Whee-ee-ee! Whoopee!” cried Jack. 
“Come on, Ralph and Helen. It’s light 
enough to see something. Let ’s look at the 
pile to-night and then get up early in the 
morning.” 

“ Glad it ’ll be Saturday,” remarked Ralph. 

The next morning all the neighboring 
children stopped in for a minute and stayed 
to help. The contractor for the new house 
became interested and gave them a little aid. 


i8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

and by ten o’clock the corner posts of a 
six-foot square house were up, with tim- 
bers to connect them at both top and 
bottom. 

“ Wish we could put a cupola on it,” said 
Ralph. 

“So do 1,” said Maggie. “They’re so 
sort of stylish-looking,” 

“ Besides,” added Jack, “it would be so 
handy whenever we had a grown-up visitor. 
You see he could stand right in the middle 
and let his head stick up in it.” 

“ Yup ! 1 mean yes,” said Patsy Flannigan, 
“or else you might just leave a hole there 
for his head, the way they do with giraffes 
in circus wagons. Come up, come up, 
ladies and gentlemen, to see the most re- 
markable ^/-raffe in captivity 1 ” 

“And /aspect the educated monkey!” 
added Maggie wickedly, with a little gesture 
toward Patsy, who had played a joke on her 
the day before. 

When the laughter was over Ralph ended 
discussion by saying: “This is not to be a 


Building the Playhouse 19 

show wagon or a theological garden, but an 
h-o-u-s-e. Somebody get me a board.” 

Maggie worked right with the boys, using 
the tools as well as they and pounding her 
nails as straight. Sallie, Janice, Bertha, and 
Helen picked up the dropped nails, tidied 
the ground around (it was built in what 
had been part of the garden), and then began 
sticking old shingles in the ground to mark 
out a door-yard. 

When the roof was on, they all sat down 
under it to rest. “ Have some pie-plant ?” 
said jack, thinking that refreshments of some 
sort would be welcome. “I’ll get it.” And 
he passed around nine big but rather limp 
stalks. 

“ Boys,” exclaimed Maggie, “we ’ve clean 
forgot the cellar !” 

“ We couldn’t have one,” they said. 

“Yes, we could,” she insisted. “Any- 
how we could call it that and keep things in 
it, the way they used to in the dirt floor 
slave cabins teacher read about last week. 
Let ’s just dig a hole in the ground and set a 


20 The Millers and Their Playmates 

box down in it with a lid. Then we could 
put some food down there and play it was a 
trap-door when we raised the lid. 

“ 1 fink,” remarked Helen, “that 1 will dig 
the cellar myself.” 

“Pooh, you can ’t do that ! That ’s boys’ 
work,” said Jack. 

Helen straightened herself with great dig- 
nity. “ 1 fought about the house first,” she 
said, “ and / fink / shall dig that cellar." 

“ Aw, let her,” begged jimmy, “ It ’ll be 
lots of fun for her, and the other little girls 
can help carry away the dirt. 1 ’ve got a 
box over home that ’ll be just right.” 

So Helen dug the cellar with a trowel, 
blistering her hands and bending the trowel, 
but making a hole large enough to take in 
jimmy’s box after he had trimmed out the 
corners with his spade. The plan of the 
house was this : a door in the middle of the 
front, a board seat built the whole length 
of each side, and a place in the middle of the 
back side for a stove. The cellar was under 
the front end of one of the seats. The roof 


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Building the Playhouse 21 

was about six feet from the ground in front 
and somewhat lower in the back. There 
was no window. 

The boards for the house were quite wide, 
and those for the roof and the front of the 
house were already the right length ; so with 
five builders and four little helpers the work 
got along very fast, in spite of the times 
when they all stopped for a game of tag or 
still-waters. 

At four o’clock Ralph flung down his ham- 
mer and said: “ She ’s done for to-day, even 
if the hinges are not on the door. 1 have 
three blisters on my hands and one place 
where the saw slipped and scratched me, 
and 1 don’t know how many times 1 ’ve 
pounded my fingers.” 

“ Me too ! ” said Jack. 

“ 1 ’ve quit,” said Patsy. 

“So ’ve 1,” said jimmy. 

The little girls had already gone into the 
house for water, but Maggie, the worker, 
was not ready to stop. “ 1 ’d feel better if 
I knew where we could get a stove,” said 


22 The Millers and Their Playmates 

she. “ I just ache to cook something in 
this dear little house, and I can’t do it with- 
out a stove. Can’t you boys think of one ? 
It seems to me that I saw one thrown away 
somewhere last week, but I can’t think 
where.” 

“Oh, do,” begged the four boys. “ We ’ll 
keep as still as mice while you try.” 

There was a long silence. “ It ’s no use,” 
she said at last. “ 1 can’t do it now! But 
I Just believe I shall remember it yet.” 

Maggie had to go home to help her 
mother, and the boys lingered in the little 
cabin for which they had worked so hard. 
Of course they spoke about the stove. 

“Maggie ’ll remember it,” declared Jim- 
mie. “ She never forgets entirely for good. 
She ’s like a witch to find things, Mrs. Flynn 
says.” 

“ Maggie ’s as clever as any of us fellows 
— almost,” said jack. “ It ’s too bad she ’s a 
girl.” 

“Well,” said Patsy slowly, “I used to 
think girls was n’t any good, but there ’s a 


23 


Building the Playhouse 

few 1 like first-class. She ’s one. She ’s so 
handy with tools — can't she drive nails, 
though ! ” 

At eight o’clock that night, when the little 
Millers were all in bed, the front door-bell 
rang. Mrs. Miller answered it and the boys, 
from their room upstairs, heard her say, 
“Why, yes, certainly, but do not talk 
long.” 

A minute later Patsy’s whistle brought 
all three children to the open windows be- 
side their beds. “ What is it ?” they asked 
in great excitement. 

“ We got it,” said Maggie’s voice in the 
darkness. “The stove, you know. 1 went 
home and thought just fit to bust me head, 
and after supper 1 knew. 1 had seen it 
down near the station and it was an old 
potato stove.”* 

“ You just ought to see it, boys,” said Jim- 
mie. “Maggie came over to tell us right 

* A small cheap stove made for use in box-cars in which potatoes 
are shipped in cold weather, and often thrown away when spring 
comes. 


24 The Millers and Their Playmates 

after supper and we went down with ner 
to get it ” 

“They ’d thrown it away last spring, you 
know,” interrupted Patsy, “after they had 
shipped all their potatoes, and ” 

“Strike a match, Patsy, so they can see 
it,” directed Maggie. “ Sure, it will be just 
elegant in the playhouse.” 

Patsy struck several matches, so the child- 
ren upstairs had several short looks at the 
stove. “ Is n’t that slick, though! ” the boys 
were heard to say. 

Patsy, proud to help in securing the prize, 
turned it around and around with one hand 
while holding matches with the other. 
“It’s almost as good as new,” he declared. 
“ It needs blacking some, but most stoves 
do now and then. Jimmie has some bricks 
he ’ll let us take for legs, because there ’s 
only one left in the stove, and I 'm pretty 
sure we can get some pipe somewhere.” 

“1 know we can,” said jack. “I know 
just where 1 saw some on father’s scrap- 
iron pile.” 


Building the Playhouse 25 

“ Won’t you let me cook the first fing ? ” 
asked Helen from her window. 

“ Uh-«A,” said Ralph. “ Maggie got the 
stove, so she ought to have the first chance.” 

“Oh, let her,” begged Maggie. “She 
was the one that thought about the house. 
1 ’d just as lief as not, and 1 ’ll be second 
cook.” 

“All right,” agreed Ralph. 

“ 1 told your mother we would n’t talk 
long,” said Maggie, “and my mother said 1 
must n’t stay out any later ’n 1 could help, so 
good-night. We ’ll put the stove in the 
playhouse and then we ’ll have a party 
there Monday night after school.” 

“Good night!” called the little Millers, 
and tumbled into their beds again, jack 
spoke just once after that, and then he said, 
“How 1 wish we could put off Sundays 
instead of putting off parties!” 

***** 

That Sunday was certainly the longest 
one the Miller children had ever known. 
Usually they were very fond of the day. 


26 The Millers and Their Playmates 

with its special books and privileges and 
with their father at home. It was always 
understood that on that day they were not 
to go visiting or have other children visit 
them; and, however much Maggie and the 
Flannigans longed to visit the little house 
they had helped to build, they knew the 
rule too well to come over, so they waved 
their hands whenever Ralph or Jack or 
Helen looked over the back fence toward 
their homes, or called softly “To-morrow! 
You know! ” 

It was some consolation to be allowed to 
get together a few colored prints for the 
walls and put them up with pins, and to 
carry out a few old cooking utensils which 
Aurelia set out for them while they wiped 
and put away the dinner dishes for her. 
They were also allowed to pick out and 
scrub up a dozen potatoes each to store 
away in the tiny cellar, and to pick out the 
smallest cabbage of the many standing in 
the garden and store that away. 

“That cabbage is a great scheme,” said 


Building the Playhouse 27 

Jack. “ Before we had that we could only 
say ‘the potatoes in our cellar,’ but now 
we can say ‘ our winter vegetables.’ ” 

They ate their Sunday night lunch there, 
too. It was just the regular bread and milk 
and cheese which they always had for Sun- 
day lunch, but it had what Helen called “ a 
sort of extra flavor.” When that was eaten 
and it began to grow dark, Mr. Miller called 
them to come in for their Sunday evening 
hour around the piano. 

“ O dear,” sighed Jack. “1 just haU to 
go! Don’t you wish we could sleep here, 
Ralph ? ” 

“It would be fine,” said Ralph. “You 
could sleep on one side and 1 could sleep on 
the other.” 

“ Guess you would n’t be very comfort- 
able,” remarked Helen. “ I ’d rather sleep 
in my own little room.” 

“Pooh! That’s cause you’re a girl,” 
said Jack. “It’s different with us boys 
and men! ” 

“ I should say so,” agreed Ralph. “Just 


28 The Millers and Their Playmates 

think how soldiers do, and hunters. They 
just sleep anywhere. 1 expect the sort of 
men who hunt bears could just lie right 
down on a bumpy log and sleep all night, 
without rolling off or even thinking it was 
hard.” 

“ Let’s ask Mother,” said jack. 

“ She won’t let you,” said Helen. 

“Well, it won’t do any harm to ask,” 
said Ralph. “That’s what she always 
says, you know. We may ask her any- 
thing, only we must do it pleasantly and 
when she is not busy, and then keep sweet 
if she says ‘ No.’ ” 

And that was how it happened that, after 
they had sung a few songs together, Ralph 
asked and received permission for both boys 
to sleep in the playhouse that night. They 
were to dress more warmly than usual for 
the night, and were to carry out pillows 
and blankets. Mrs. Miller hung a key to 
the back door around Ralph’s neck and left 
the light burning on the back porch. “ If 
you should want to come into your own 


Building the Playhouse 29 

beds,” she said, “ bring in your bedding and 
lock the door after you. Then find your 
way up-stairs as quietly as you can, so as 
not to disturb anybody.” 

“All right,” said Ralph, “we’ll remem- 
ber, but we won’t come. It’ll betoocosey 
out there.” 

“ You just have somebody come out and 
call us in time for breakfast,” added Jack. 
“Give us about half an hour warning. 1 
s ’pose we can sort of wrap a blanket around 
to hide our pajamas.” 

“Yes, that will be all right,” said Mr. 
Miller. “Now, good-night, and pleasant 
dreams! Be sure to tuck up well.” 

“ We will 1 We will ! ” cried the boys as 
they found their way out to the playhouse 
by the rays of the porch light. Mr. and 
Mrs. Miller went into the sitting-room on 
the farther side of the house and began to 
read. Helen was already in bed. 

The playhouse door was not yet in place, 
so there was plenty of fresh air within, and 
the middle of the tiny room was dimly 


30 The Millers and Their Playmates 

lighted. The boys made their beds joyfully 
and lay down. 

“What way are you going to sleep?” 
asked jack. 

“ On my back,” replied Ralph. 

“I’m going to sleep on my side, so 1 can 
look at you,” said jack. 

Then there was silence, for they had 
promised to try to go directly to sleep. 

Ralph sighed. 

Jack wriggled. 

Ralph said, “Jack, are you awake ? ” 

jack said, “Yes. Are you ? ” 

Then it was still again. 

Ralph sat upright. “ 1 ’m going to lie down 
a different way,” he said. “I’m going to 
sleep on my side.” 

“ Don’t,” jack said with great earnest- 
ness. “It isn’t any good that way. I’m 
going to sleep on my back.” 

“You won’t like it,” advised Ralph. 

“ Don’t care ! 1 ’m going to try it.” 

After a period of wriggling and rearranging 
all was silent again. 


Building the Playhouse 31 

Slap ! came Jack’s hand against his cheek. 

“ What ’s the matter ? ” asked Ralph. 

“ Mosquito ! ” answered jack. “ 1 did n’t 
hear him, but 1 was sure 1 felt him.” 

“ Guess you imagined it,” said Ralph. “ 1 
haven’t seen one in a week. Frost killed 
them most likely.” 

“ Well, now 1 ’ve sort of got awake again, 

1 ’m going to try sleeping on my face,” 
said jack. “ Isn’t it funny how hard your 
bones get when you don’t sleep in a 
bed ? ” 

“ f/A-huh. My board doesn’t seem to fit 
me just right, somehow,” replied Ralph. 

Another silence lasted a few minutes and 
was broken by Ralph, who slapped his arm 
half a dozen times as hard as he could. “ It 
is a mosquito after all,” he said. 

And so it went for some time, until the 
rising wind brought them a queer long- 
drawn groaning sound, jack raised himself 
on his elbow. The sound was repeated. 
“ Ralph ! ” whispered jack. “ Did you hear 
that ? ” 


32 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Yes, I did,” said Ralph rather impa- 
tiently. “What of it?” 

“ Nothing of it ! ” retorted Jack. “ Course 
1 know it is n’t anything, but 1 was just 
going to ask you if you didn’t think pan- 
thers howled that way. 1 thought it would 
interest you. If you don’t care about learn- 
ing any more natural history, you need n’t. 
/ won’t lie awake any longer trying to teach 
you things.” 

“Natural history!” snorted Ralph. 
‘ ‘ That ’s the door of Flannigan’s wood-shed, 
and they forgot to fasten it shut.” 

Before long Ralph said, “jack ! 1 ’m very 
thirsty and a little hungry. Do you s’pose 
we could get into the house without awak- 
ening anybody ? Perhaps we 'd better carry 
in our things and stay there, if we do go, so 
as not to have to open and shut the outside 
door twice.” 

“1 don’t really want to stay in,” said 
jack, “ but p’raps we’d better. 1 was wor- 
rying a little about my school to-morrow. 
You know Mother always says children 


Building the Playhouse 33 

can’t study well unless they have plenty of 
sleep.” 

“ All right,” said Ralph. “ If you feel that 
way, perhaps we ’d better stay in. It must 
be two o’clock anyhow by this time.” 

They gathered up pillows and blankets 
and stole towards the house. They drank 
water in the kitchen and munched crackers 
in the pantry, then tiptoed into the front 
hall. Light came through the sitting-room 
door-way. “ Father forgot to turn it out,” 
whispered Ralph. “ 1 ’ll go in and do it.” 
They turned on the hall light and went 
toward the sitting-room. In the door-way 
they stopped. There sat Mr. and Mrs. 
Miller quietly reading. 

“ W-what are you up for so late ?” stam- 
mered Jack. 

Ralph glanced at the clock. It was just 
half past nine. Ralph had dignity and good 
manners. “Thank you very much for let- 
ting us stay in the playhouse,” he said. 
“We decided, though, to come in for the 
rest of the night.” 


34 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“We thought we’d better on account of 
school to-morrow, you know,” added Jack. 
“ 1 have a very hard ’rithmetic lesson to get, 
and there was so much to think of out there 
that 1 was n’t going to sleep very fast.” 

Mrs. Miller smiled. “ 1 think you were 
very sensible,” said she. 

“So do 1,” said Mr. Miller. 

The boys went up-stairs, made their beds, 
and stretched out in them. 

“ This is good enough for me,” said Ralph. 

“Me too,” said Jack. 


CHAPTER HI 

THE PLAYHOUSE PARTY 

T last Monday’s school was over, and 



the children who were to cook their 
supper in the playhouse ran every step of 
the way to it. Their eagerness was all the 
greater because they did not have to wait 
and hunt around for any stove-pipe. When 
Ralph peeped in through the open doorway 
at noon, he had found enough pipe lying be- 
side the old stove, with a brown-paper tag 
on it, “With the compliments of Father.” 
Now all they had to do was to set the stove 
on its brick legs, adjust the pipe, build the 
fire, cook, and eat. It seemed very simple 
indeed to them. 

Everybody looked at the stove-pipe first, 
jack said, “ 1 s’pose it isn’t very nice of me, 
but I do wish it was new.” 

“ So do I,” said Ralph. 


35 


36 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“That’s just like boys,” scolded Maggie. 
“ How do you think my stove would look 
with elegant new black pipe on it ? 1 ’d 
rather have it the way it is. Some people 
would say, ‘ 1 wish 1 had some blacking and 
a brush to shine it up.’” 

“ Means you fellows ! ’’ said Patsy. 

“ Did you, Maggie?” asked Jack. Ralph 
knew better than to ask. But Maggie did 
not answer. 

The boys took off their coats and shoved 
up their sleeves and began to put on the 
ways of grown-up workmen. Patsy took 
to this now quite as naturally as Ralph had 
done when they were building the play- 
house. His father often helped with the 
house-cleaning, and Patsy knew just how 
such things should be managed. In his ex- 
citement he forgot his efforts to speak the 
best of English and dropped back into the 
way of talking which he had used all the 
time until two years before when he had de- 
cided to become a college professor. 

“ Pick up them bricks there, Jimmie ! ” he 


37 


The Playhouse Party 

said. “ Help him slip ’em under there, Jack. 
Miller [this was to Ralph], you help me lift 
this stove around. All together now ! Up 
she goes ! Fix that brick there, Jimmie. 
You fix yours now. Jack. Wait till 1 try her 
to see if she wobbles. Yank that pebble out 
from under your brick there. Jack. Your 
bricks don’t set straight.” 

“I won't," declared Jack with blazing 
eyes. “1 don’t mind being bossed part of 
the time, as long as 1 have a chance to boss 
some, myself, after a while, but you need 
not think 1 ’ll stand it to have you call me 
just Jack. You got to call me ‘ Miller’ too ! ” 

“Aw, come on,” said Patsy good-naturedly 
enough. “ 1 didn’t mean anything. You ’re 
only a little boy anyhow, you know. Be- 
sides we ’ll get all mixed up if 1 call you both 
the same thing.” 

“Maybe 1 am a little boy,” sputtered 
Jack, “but you’re more of little boy than 1 
am because you ’re bigger. And you can call 
me Jones if you want to, or Smith, or any- 
thing, and I’ll work all right, but 1 won’t do 


38 The Millers and Their Playmates 

things if you and Ralph are going to put on 
airs.” 

Of course Jack was unreasonable. He 
missed the sleep he lost the night before and 
had been out-of-sorts once or twice in 
school. But Patsy did the sensible thing. 
“AH right, Jones,” he said, “just fix that 
pebble now, will you ? And you. Smith [to 
Jimmie], help Miller hold the pipe while 1 
jine it on.” 

Soon the stove was ready for the fire and 
Jack “bossed” that, with Jimmy as chief 
helper. “ Here you. Smith,” he said, “hand 
up that kindling [it was about eight inches 
from his own foot] ! Flannigan [that was 
Patsy, you know], run into the house for 
some matches, will you ? Miller, you bring 
in four more sticks of wood.” He stood 
with one hand in a hip pocket while waiting 
for the matches, that being a favorite posi- 
tion with the head builder of the new house, 
when standing idle. 

After a few puffs of smoke, which filled 
the tiny building and sent the children 


39 


The Playhouse Party 

coughing into the open air, the little fire 
burned merrily. Jimmie was not the stuff 
of which leaders are made and sought no 
responsibility, so nobody disputed Maggie 
and Helen their chance to manage the cook- 
ing, and Maggie took charge at once. “Step 
lively now, the lot of ye men folks,” she 
said. '‘Mister Flannigan, will you kindly 
fill this kettle with water ? Mister Miller, will 
you kindly go down cellar after the potatoes ? 
Mister Jones, 1 ’ll thank you to put another 
stick of wood into the stove. Mister Smith, 
run over home and ask my mother to let me 
take the little red-handled knife for peeling 
the potatoes, and Jimmie, if she is n’t there 
you just take it anyhow. It ’s in the box on 
the kitchen table, and you can walk right in.” 

" How many potatoes do you want, Mag- 
gie,” asked Ralph. 

“1 don’t know,” answered Maggie. “Helen 
is really going to cook them, you know.” 

“1 fink I want six,” said Helen gravely, 
“that’s just how many of us there are, isn’t 
it?” 


40 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ You ’d better have two apiece, anyhow," 
advised Ralph. “I tell you such work as 
putting up stoves makes men hungry.” 

“And our mother always says it ’s a good 
plan to have enough so you can ask a friend 
to stay to supper if you want to,” added 
Jack. 

“ Six times two is twelve and two more 
is fourteen. That looks like a good many,” 
said Maggie, who was used to seeing her 
mother cook potatoes for only two. “ 1 
guess, Helen, you ’d better not try to 
peel ’em if there’s such a lot. just slice a 
little of the paring ofTn each end and sort 
of scratch down the sides a couple o’ times 
with the point of your knife. 1 ’ll show you 
how.” 

So Helen went to work upon her fourteen 
already scrubbed potatoes, and Maggie 
looked around restlessly for something else 
to do. “ It ’s a shame not to use that elegant 
great frying-pan ! 1 just ache to cook some- 
thing in it,” she said. 

“How do you fix tomatoes?” asked 


^TTTT 



Kindly fill the kettle, Mr. Miller 








41 


The Playhouse Party 

Patsy. “Do you fry ’em or bake ’em?” 

“ Stew them of course,” said Maggie. 

“What made you ask about tomat ^Jack, 

do you suppose we could have those out in 
the garden ? ” 

“I know we could,” replied jack. 
“ Mother has used all she wants, and told 
me to pick the rest and put them into .the 
garbage can, but 1 forgot it.” 

“ Come on then,” cried Maggie. “ Let’s 
get some and cook them for our supper. 
Don’t take any that are squashy, please. 
They are not good.” 

“Maggie,” shouted Patsy, from the door- 
way of the playhouse, “ Helen wants to 
know how long you cook potatoes.” 

“ Not more’n half an hour,” Maggie called 
back. “When you stick a big fork into 
them and they slide off from it, they’re 
done.” 

“I’ll time them with my watch,” said 
Ralph, as the potatoes were dumped into 
the kettle. “But doesn’t Maggie know a 
lot, though ! 1 don’t see how women can 


42 The Millers and Their Playmates 

remember all these things about cooking 
without writing them down. 1 believe if 
you should awaken Aurelia in the middle of 
the night and ask her how to make fried 
cakes, she ’d tell you. Or cream puffs. Or 
sponge cake.” 

“ I expect it’s pretty much the same way 
we fellows remember about ‘fends’ and 
‘ dubs ’ and ‘ fans ’ and ‘ taw ’ in marble sea- 
son,” said Patsy. “Those interest us and 
cooking interests them.” 

“ It’s a good ting for you boys that we do 
remember such fings,” said Helen gravely. 
“And 1 fink cooking is a good deal more 
usefuler than marbles, ’cause you can’t eat 
them.” 

“But they last longer,” retorted Patsy, 
with twinkling eyes. “The trouble with 
vittles is that they don’t keep.” 

Here Maggie and Jack returned with the 
tomatoes, which were soon peeled and 
sliced into the frying-pan to cook. It took 
careful planning to get both kettle and fry- 
ing-pan on top of the little stove at once. 


43 


The Playhouse Party 

and then they had to be looked after most 
carefully whenever a stick of wood was put 
inside. 

Presently Ralph looked at his watch. 
“It’s twenty minutes now,” he said. 
“ Shall 1 try the potatoes, Maggie ? ” 

“ 1 fink 1 will try my own potatoes,” said 
Helen. “ Maggie ! They are not any much 
soft at all yet.” 

Maggie gave a quick look. “Sure the 
water’s not boiling at all yet,” said she. 
“When did you begin to count the time, 
Ralph?” 

“When Helen put them in, of course,” 
he replied. “ Was n’t that right ? ” 

“ Faith, no ! ” said she. “ They can’t cook 
till the water boils, and it is just after 
beginning.” 

“ Oh,” said Ralph. “ 1 didn’t understand 
that. 1 ’ll start over again. But, say, Mag- 
gie, 1 ’m hungrier ’ll a bear.” 

“ Better be getting your other stuff and 
the dishes,” said Maggie. “I’ll go over 
home for mine as soon as you get back. 


44 The Millers and Their Playmates 

All you boys go right off, and get back in 
time to put in the next stick of wood for us.” 

The Flannigans cut across lots, and Ralph 
and Jack were just vanishing inside the 
kitchen door, when Maggie called, “Bring 
out some butter for the tomatoes ! ” 

“And salt,” added Helen. 

“ And pepper,” called Maggie. 

“ Uh-uh 1 Mother does n’t believe in pep- 
per for children, so they can ’t,” said Helen. 

“All right,” said Maggie. “1 don’t much 
care, and we won’t tell Patsy and Jimmie.” 

By this time the playhouse was very hot, 
so they set the table, a box, outside. Bread 
and butter, cookies, dried beef, and apples 
made quite a showing. The seats were of 
various kinds, one stone, one small box, one 
chunk of firewood, and three pumpkins, 
which were to be made into jack-o’ lanterns 
for Hallowe’en. 

All stood in an eager circle while Helen 
tested the potatoes. They were not quite 
done. The boys were so restless that Mag- 
gie advised them to play tag until supper 


45 


The Playhouse Party 

should be ready, and they ran off with a 
shout to take her advice, promising to return 
the minute they were called. Helen was 
anxious about the potatoes. “ Are you sure 
they will be all right?” she asked several 
times. “ You know 1 truly never boiled any- 
thing before, and boiling is much harder 
than frying or broiling, the way Aurelia lets 
us do, because it is down inside, so that 
you can ’t watch it.” 

“Don't you worry,” the older girl told 
her. “They’ll be just fine, .that’s what 
they will. Me mother always says there is 
nothing like potatoes. She says that in the 
ould country the people sometimes have 
hardly anything else to eat, and that when 
you can have salt on them they are fit for a 
king.” 

“ PVhenyou have salt on them ! ” exclaimed 
Helen. “Why folks never eat them with- 
out salt, do they ?” 

“ Sure,” said Maggie. “ 1 ’ve done it lots 
of times. When me father was killed on 
the railroad and 1 was a bit of a girl, he owed 


46 The Millers and Their Playmates 

some money on the house over there. Me 
mother was set on keeping the house, and 
she took in washings to get money to pay 
for it. And how she saved the pennies ! 1 
remember, when she was getting the money 
together for the last payment, the salt bag 
got empty and she would n’t get any more 
till she was sure she would have money 
left after the house was paid for. You see 
she was afraid that she would n’t have quite 
enough, and she had to be sure.” 

“And did you eat potatoes without salt 
then ?” asked Helen. 

“Yes, for more’n a week,” said Maggie, 
“ and then one night 1 came in from playing 
and saw a new bag of salt on the kitchen 
table, and asked her if it meant that the 
house was all paid for. And she said, ‘ Yes, 
thank God 1 ’ We had boiled potatoes with 
salt on them that night, and I tell you they 
tasted good. And after supper she showed 
me her pocket-book and there was just 
eight cents left in it.” 

“ Poor Maggie,” said Helen. 1 ’m going 


47 


The Playhouse Party 

to eat one of mine without salt to-night 
just to see how bad it was for you. Don’t 
you s’ pose they ’re most done now ? ” 

“ Done to a turn,” answered Maggie after 
one quick look. Then, while Helen was 
lifting them carefully out, she called the 
boys. They answered from near the hydrant 
in the lawn, and the girls waited and waited 
for them to appear. Helen sat upon a some- 
what wabbly pumpkin, with the pan of 
steaming potatoes in front of her. Maggie 
was on the box at the other end, with the 
tomatoes in front of her, still in the frying- 
pan. 

Then the boys came. Tag had left them 
flushed, their plentiful washing at the 
hydrant had left them very wet in streaks, 
and their hair was most carefully plastered 
down all over their heads. But they came 
as gentlemen come to a party, with good 
manners. It was a great surprise to the 
girls, and they never found out that it came 
from a hint which Mr. Miller dropped as he 
passed in to his supper. Helen felt for her 


48 The Millers and Their Playmates 

hair-ribbon and straightened it. Maggie 
wiped her hot face with her handkerchief, 
and hoped that nobody would see where she 
had spilled tomatoes on her gingham dress. 

The boys felt so changed by their elaborate 
toilet that they acted a little stiff. It was 
Jimmie who started the chatter again. “ Bet 
you girls can’t guess how we parted our 
hair 1 ” he remarked. 

“ With a comb of course,” said Helen. 

“ With your fingers,” said Maggie. 

“Thought you could n’t,” cried Jimmie. 
“ We did it with a chip. Did you hear Jack 
holler? He squirmed and the chip sort of 
dug into his skin. He said Ralph did it on 
purpose, but he didn’t. You can see the 
place now, if you Took.” 

“Poor Jack,” said Helen. “Why didn’t 
you go into the house and get a comb ?” 

“ He dars n’t,” interrupted Jimmie. “Last 
time we went in for something, Aurelia said 
that just as sure as another boy came traips- 
ing into the house she ’d keep him there the 
rest of the day.” 


The Playhouse Party 49 

“ It was nice of you boys to slick up so,” 
said Maggie, serving the stewed tomatoes in 
tin cups as she spoke. “ Helen and I didn’t 
have any chance to fix ourselves, because 
we could n’t leave our cooking.” 

“jack did n’t really want to,” remarked 
Jimmie, who was always telling things that 
might better have been untold. “That’s 
why he squirmed so.” 

“You’d better not say anything yourself, 
Jimmie Flannigan,” said Jack wrathfully. 
“You know you wouldn’t have done it if 
Patsy had n’t made you ! ” 

Maggie hurried a cup of tomatoes over to 
Jack and stopped his talking. 

“ It ’s sort of funny about me,” said Ralph. 
“ I used to just hate to get clean, and now 
I don’t mind it at all — by spells. Some- 
times 1 really enjoy it, especially if I am go- 
ing to be around with folks that are clean 
themselves.” 

“Same with me,” agreed Patsy. “My 
mother says it’s a sign I am growing up.” 

During this talk all had been preparing 


50 The Millers and Their Playmates 

their potatoes and arranging the food on 
their tin plates. Now they began eating. 
Patsy took the first mouthful. “ These po- 
tatoes are very nice,” he said to Helen. 

“ Mine are delicious.” said Ralph. 

“They’re dandy,” said Jack. 

“ Mine are awfully good,” said Jimmie. 

“Fank you/’ said Helen, who had often 
heard her mother thank the family for com- 
plimenting her cooking. Then she explained 
to Maggie, “ 1 got salt on mine before I 
fought, but 1 ’m going to try some without, 
by-and-by.” 

That suggested the story of how Mrs. 
Flynn had washed and saved for the house. 
The boys had not heard it and were much 
impressed. It had never occurred to them 
that their little back street neighbor was 
poor, although she lived in a small house 
and often helped her mother with her wash- 
ings and ironings. The Flannigan home 
was not much larger, but Mr. Flannigan was 
a hard-working man and his wife was a good 
housekeeper, so they were always sure of 


The Playhouse Party 51 

enough to eat and comfortable clothing to 
wear. 

“Are you poor now?” asked Ralph, 
solemnly. 

“ Indeed we’re not,” replied Maggie, hap- 
pily. “ Me mother says that any two peo- 
ple with good strong bodies like we have, 
and a tidy little home, and plenty to eat and 
wear, and twenty-seven hens, and a good 
pig in the pen are in great luck. Besides, 
she has two hundred and forty-seven dollars 
in the bank at interest, and if her washings 
don’t fall off, nor me break any more legs, 
it’ll be three hundred by next fall.” 

“Jiminy! Ain’t you glad, though?” 
asked Jack. 

“ You bet 1 am,” said Maggie. “ 1 mean, 
of course 1 am.” 

“Tell you what you ought to do,” sug- 
gested Ralph, who had been reading lately 
in one of his father’s books. “ You ought to 
have a real poor supper once a year on the 
an-ni-ver-sa-ry of your mother’s getting the 
house paid for, just to remind you of the 


52 The Millers and Their Playmates 

hard times you used to have and got over. 
You know how the Jews do at Passover, 
don’t you ? Of course they have lamb to 
eat, and that is good, but then they have 
unleavened bread and bitter herbs, to re- 
mind them of the hard times their people 
had under the Egyptians and they ‘ eat those 
for remembrance.’ 1 think you ought to eat 
your potatoes without salt once a year ‘ for 
remembrance.’ 1 would, if I were you. My 
father says it is good for people to do such 
things.” 

“Perhaps 1 will,” said Maggie doubtfully. 
“ I’ll tell my mother about it anyhow.” 

“Maggie,” said jack, “these tomatoes 
are very nice.” 

“They look just like what Aurelia cooks,” 
said Ralph. 

“ I am very glad you thought of them,” 
said Patsy. 

“They’re elegant,” said Jimmie, “but 
is n’t it funny how sort of sour they taste ? ” 

“Thank you,” said Maggie. “ Seems to 
me they don’t taste just like me mother’s. 


53 


The Playhouse Party 

but I can’t tell why. 1 put in butter and salt 
and a speck of sugar, just the way she does. 
1 left out the pepper on purpose. 1 wonder 
what I forgot.” 

“ Aurelia puts in something that bubbles 
when they are very sour,” suggested jack. 

“ 1 know,” cried Helen. “ It is sody.” 

“ Sure,” said Maggie, “ 1 Vesee me mother 
do that same sometimes. Eat something 
else and 1 ’ll fetch some.” 

Soon she was back with half a cupful 
which she had taken from the can in her 
mother’s kitchen. “Now,” she announced, 
“we will each fix our own. Use just a 
speck at first.” 

It was great fun, putting in a tiny pinch 
and watching the bubbles rise in the stewed 
tomatoes where the soda had gone in. The 
stirring and tasting was also fun, and soon 
all but Jack were quite satisfied. He put in 
a little at a time for a while, and then, when 
nobody noticed him, stirred in a whole tea- 
spoonful. Instantly there was a loud foam- 
ing, hissing sound, and the pink bubbles 


54 The Millers and Their Playmates 

began to run over onto the table. Jack 
sprang to his feet, upsetting the pumpkin 
upon which he had been sitting, and car- 
ried the cup a few feet away to overflow 
harmlessly upon the ground. 

“ Soda water ! ” he cried. “Tomato soda 
water ! Five cents a glass ! I never knew 
how soda water was made before.” 

“ Oh, Jack ! ” exclaimed Maggie, “ you ’ve 
spoiled your tomatoes, and there ’s no more 
in the frying-pan.” 

“ Uh-wA,” said Jack, taking a swallow 
right from the cup. “ It ’s just right. 1 like 
mine this way.” 

“Jack,” said Helen, “ why do you wrinkle 
up your face that way if you like it ? ” 

“ Bubbles tickled my nose,” replied Jack. 
“Guess I’ll wait till they’re gone before 1 
take any more.” 

But he never finished eating or drinking 
it, for when everything else was gone he 
declared that to eat more might make him 
ill. 

Helen tasted it when she and Maggie 


The Playhouse Party 55 

were clearing off the table. “Owl” she 
cried,” it tastes just like soapsuds ! ” 
“Sh-h-h!” whispered Maggie. “Don’t 
let on you know. He made believe like it, 
so I would n’t feel badly. He ’s just kind, 
that ’s what he is. I ’m sorry I plague him 
sometimes.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

SMOKING. 

P ROFESSOR Harding had much trouble 
that fall from his school-boys smoking. 
He himself never smoked, although many 
of his friends did. What he said was that 
no boy who attended the public school 
should smoke, if he could help it. What 
they did after being graduated from the high 
school was not his business; what they did 
before was. 

Some of the tougher big boys stole 
tobacco from their fathers or bought cigar- 
ettes down town. These they lit occasion- 
ally in hidden corners of the school grounds, 
or in an old barn near by, swaggering around 
with the corners of their mouths drawn 
down and puffing vigorously. 

Of course these same boys began to have 
poor recitations, and, also of course, many 
56 


Smoking 


57 


of the smaller boys began to wish that they 
dared to do the same thing. So Ben Stuart 
and Sammy Robinson, and a lot of boys like 
them, began to roll cigarettes made of pa- 
per from their school tablets and filled with 
dried corn-silk, clover-tops, or string. 

Most of them were lads whose parents 
paid very little attention to them, and who 
did about what they Chose. They went 
around with their pockets filled with smok- 
ing materials, and nobody found it out, save 
the boys to whom they told their plans. 
One day Sammy told Patsy and Patsy told 
Jimmie, and that night after school they 
and Ben Stuart got together in an old barn 
near the Flannigan house to smoke string 
cigarettes. 

Patsy had an idea that Mrs. Miller would 
not like any member of the Saturday Club 
to do such things, so he did not ask the 
Miller boys to come. Instead he talked to 
Ralph about “what some of the fellows are 
doing.” Ralph said : “Let ’em, if they want 
to. 1 don’t. Father said he ’d be perfectly 


58 The Millers and Their Playmates 

willing to have Jack and me smoke real to- 
bacco when he does, but that we ought to 
be willing to wait for him because he is the 
oldest. And we all shook hands on it that 
we would wait.” 

“When is he going to begin?” asked 
Patsy, who wanted Ralph to finish his story. 

“ Never,” said Ralph. “That’s the joke. 
We never thought to ask him until after- 
ward. But 1 don’t care. 1 ’d rather use my 
money for something else, and so would 
jack.” 

“ Did he make you promise not to smoke 
string ? ” asked Patsy. “ That does n’t cost 
anything.” 

“ Naw!” said Ralph, who was in a hurry 
to get away. “No use. 1 don’t want to 
smoke string anyhow.” 

Patsy said nothing more about it. He 
felt that he would not like Mr. Miller to 
know about his plans, however, for it made 
him feel somewhat sneaky. So he cautioned 
Jimmie not to “ let on,” and took him along 
to the barn. For a short time all went well. 


Smoking 


59 


The four boys rolled their cigarettes of string 
or cloyer-tops and puffed away in great style. 
To be sure their throats became rather hot 
and dry and their eyes smarted, but they 
pretended to be quite old and manly and 
talked of great things which they expected 
to do a few years later. 

Then the matches gave out and Jimmie 
was told to go into the house to get some 
more. 

“ How ’ll 1 manage it ? ” he said. “ How 
many do you need, anyhow ? ” 

“ Oh, get us a handful,” said Ben Stuart, 
answering the second question first. 

“Go in the front way,” advised Patsy. 
“Mother’ll be in the sitting-room with the 
baby. Then you go out into the kitchen, as 
if you were going to get a drink of water. 
Then grab the matches and scoot.” 

limmie obeyed. Mrs. Flannigan looked 
up from her sewing and asked him where 
Patsy was. He replied, “ Oh, out back of 
the house somewhere,” and passed through. 
Ten minutes later. Just as four fresh cigar- 


6o The Millers and Their Playmates 

ettes had been rolled and lighted, the Flan- 
nigan baby cried and had to be lifted, from 
her cradle. Then Mrs. Flannigan saw the 
kitchen screen door standing open, and went 
to close it. On the floor lay two matches. 
The box on the shelf was open and several 
stuck out. Evidently somebody had helped 
himself in haste. 

“Now what,” said Mrs. Flannigan, “is 
thatj boy Jimmie up to? Is it bonfires, I 
wonder ? ” 

She walked to the door again with the 
baby in her arms, and stood looking out. It 
was a beautiful, still October day and the 
street on which she lived was a quiet one. 
She heard no sound of leaf-gathering and 
saw no smoke. There was no smell of 
burning leaves. Perhaps if she had been 
busier she would not have thought so much 
about it, but she was just holding the baby 
until she should fall asleep again, and she 
was puzzled by the way in which Jimmie 
had run off with the matches. Besides, 
only a couple of weeks before, a fire had 


Smoking 


6i 


been started in a shed down town, by 
boys who were playing with matches. 
As the baby dozed off again she heard 
laughter in the old barn. She laid the baby 
down, watched her a minute to be sure that 
she was sound asleep, and then went quietly 
out the back door and across the yard to the 
old barn. There was a narrow and dark 
passage-way between it and the henhouse, 
and into that she stepped. From there she 
could look through a crack without any- 
body’s seeing her. 

This was what she saw and heard. Ben 
sat on the seat of an old hay-rake which 
was stored there, his elbows on his knees 
and a clover-top cigarette between his teeth. 
“Yes siree,” he was saying, “I’ve about 
decided to use tobacco after this. Sid Cax- 
ton knows where to get slick ones cheap, 
and he ’s going to tell me as soon ’s 1 get my 
pay for picking up potatoes.” 

Patsy removed his cigarette from his lips 
and said, “Aw, string’s good enough for 
me. My money goes into the bank. I ’ve 


62 The Millers and Their Playmates 

got seventeen dollars and forty cents now, 
and 1 ’m going to pick potatoes myself 
after this.” 

“ So ’m 1,” said Jimmie, who seemed rather 
glad of an excuse to talk instead of smok- 
ing. “1 haven’t got as much saved up as 
Patsy, and 1 ’m bound to catch up with him 
if 1 can.” 

Sammy Robinson drew a match across the 
seat of his trousers. “My smoke’s gone 
out,” he said. “ Guess 1 did n’t get it rolled 
right.” 

Mrs. Flannigan carefully tiptoed back to 
the house. After she left, a board which 
she had displaced slid down from its position 
against the barn and fell with a crash. 

“ What ’s that ?” cried Ben Stuart, start- 
ing from his seat. “ You don’t think ” 

“Aw, sit down,” said Patsy. “It’s the 
hens, most likely. Nobody ever comes out 
here.” So the smoking went on in peace. 
At supper-time the other boys went home, 
and Patsy and Jimmie fed the hens and did 
their regular tasks before entering the 


Smoking 


63 


house. Nothing was said about their smell- 
ing smoky, and no questions were asked as 
to what they had been doing since school. 
They tended baby and helped with the 
dishes and were as good as — as good as— 
well, as good as boys usually are when they 
feel sneaky and are afraid of being found 
out. 

When they started for school the next 
noon Mrs. Flannigan called them back. 
“ Hurry home from school as fast as iver ye 
can to-night,” said she. “ It’s a bit of a sur- 
prise I have for ye. Ye need n’t bring any of 
the other fellows along. It ’s just for you.” 

Patsy and Jimmie were delighted. They 
wondered about it all the way to school. 
Patsy was sure it was something to eat. 
Jimmie was certain it was something to 
wear. “ I ’ll bet you it ’s sweaters,” he said, 
“sweaters or else shoes. I hope it ain’t 
shoes if we ’d have to wear ’em now. What 
month is it, Patsy ? 1 ’ve forgot.” 

“ October,” replied Patsy. 

“Sure that’s what 1 thought, but it 


64 The Millers and Their Playmates 

slipped my mind like. Well, October is too 
early for shoes onto me. 1 like to have my 
toes good and cool now and then.” 

“Me too,” said Patsy, “but lots of the 
other fellows have ’em on now. Maggie 
says it ’s time, too. Do you remember how 
she used to go barefoot ? She ’s quit it 
now. Says she ’s too big. I believe 1 won’t 
go barefoot next year.” 

“Oh, Patsy!” said Jimmie, and he had 
a hopeless feeling that his brother was 
growing up faster than he. 

“Well,” said Patsy, “ 1 kind of hope it 
is shoes, yet maybe it ain’t — 1 mean is n’t.” 

Neither boy meant to tell what Mrs. 
Flannigan seemed to want kept as a secret, 
but you know how hard it is to keep still 
about surprises, and the more they thought 
about it the more sure they felt that it was 
something really fine which their mother 
had planned for them. So at recess each 
boy dropped a few hints to his friends, and 
regretted that he was not allowed to bring 
them home with him. 


Smoking 


65 


When school was dismissed they started 
toward home on the run, and some of the 
other boys, a little envious, shouted after 
them, “ Look at the Flannigan kids leg it ! 
Look at ’em 1 Look at ’em ! Look at ’em ! ” 

When they entered the front door they 
saw neither shoes nor sweaters. “ Where is 
the ’sprise ? ” they cried. 

“Wash your face and hands first,” said 
their mother. 

Such a splashing as followed at the 
kitchen sink ! And then two warm and 
shiny-faced boys presented themselves at 
their mother’s side, holding out their hands 
and turning them over and over for her to 
see how thorough they had been. Mrs. 
Flannigan almost lost her courage as she 
looked into their happy, freckled faces, but 
she remembered her talk with her husband, 
good hard-working James Flannigan, the 
night before, and she drew two pasteboard 
boxes out from under the overalls which she 
was patching. 

“ 1 did n’t know till yesterday that ye 


66 The Millers and Their Playmates 

cared for these things,” she said, “ and your 
pa thinks that if ye ’re going to use ’em at 
all ye’d better do it at home, so now’s your 
chance.” 

Patsy suspected at once what was in the 
boxes and would not open his. Jimmie 
lifted off the cover at once, and found 
matches, paper, white cotton cord, and 
clover-tops. He blushed until his freckles 
hardly showed. “Who let on?” he de- 
manded fiercely. 

“ You did,” said Mrs. Flannigan. 

“ When I was asleep ? ” he asked. 

“No,” said she. “When ye hurried to 
the barn yesterday and left a trail of matches. 
1 followed out and saw what ye was up 
to.” 

Patsy was angry. “You never do pick 
up anything you drop,” he grumbled, looking 
crossly at Jimmie. 

“ Get your own matches then next time,” 
retorted Jimmie, “ instead of sitting around 
and sending me to sneak ’em for you.” 

“There’s sense for ye, Patsy,” cried his 



They started toward home on the run 








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Smoking 67 

mother. “ You just remember that the next 
time." 

“ I expect you’re going to lick us and tell 
us never to do it again,” said Patsy, whose 
father did not smoke and would have no 
sympathy for him. 

“Lick ye?” said good Mrs. Flannigan. 
“ Well, thank goodness, 1 ’m strong enough, 
if ye are big boys for your age, but that ain’t 
me 1 Of course 1 spanked ye good and 
plenty when ye were little shavers, same as 
1 ’d throw stones at a hen or take the broom 
to our old cat. It did ye good, too, to my 
way of thinking. But 1 don’t this time. 
What good would it do ? Ye ’d smoke no 
more in our barn, but ye ’d hang around 
some other place that was worse. No, my 
men. If ye will smoke, smoke at home. 
Sit right down here in the parlor and light 
up. 1 Ve brought in the looking-glass from 
my room, and one from the kitchen, so ye 
can see just how grand ye look.” 

Jimmie scratched one ankle with the big 
toe of his other foot. “1 don’t want to 


68 The Millers and Their Playmates 

smoke to-day,” he said. “Some of the 
fellows are going out to the pasture to 
see if the hazel nuts are ripe. 1 ’d ruther 
go with them. 1 can run and catch 
up.” 

“Not to-day,” said Mrs. Flannigan. “Ye’ll 
sit right in that parlor with a looking-glass 
in front of ye, and smoke one hour — sixty 
minutes. And if ye think there ’s any danger 
that won’t last ye for a week or so, ye can 
smoke longer. That means you too, Patsy, ” 
she added. 

“ All right. I don’t care,” remarked Patsy. 
“/ think it will be fine 1 ” 

Mrs. Flannigan said nothing. She took 
her sewing in her arms and moved her chair 
into the parlor. The boys rolled their cig- 
arettes, lighted them, and puffed away. 
Jimmie was very meek. Patsy was defiant. 
Before long he began to talk. Mrs. Flannigan 
suggested that he might better give all his 
time to smoking, now that he had such a 
good chance. 

Jimmie wriggled and cleared his throat 


Smoking 69 

several times before saying, “ May I go into 
the kitchen for a drink, please ? ” 

Now the only clock in the house usually 
stood on the kitchen shelf and it never 
struck. Jimmie’s mother suspected that he 
wanted to see the time, and she replied, 
“ Here is some water in a glass. It will not 
be necessary for you to go.” 

Jimmie drank it all, as slowly as possible, 
and went on smoking. Then Patsy was 
thirsty and said he would wait on himself 
Mrs. Flannigan said that she would get the 
water. After Patsy drank it he asked, “ Did 
you look at the time. Isn’t it pretty 
near an hour yet ? ” 

“It is fifteen minutes,” replied Mrs. 
Flannigan. 

A couple of her friends were coming down 
the street. “May we stop if you have 
callers ?” asked Patsy. 

“No,” said his mother. 

“Not even if we finish up the hour after- 
ward ?” asked Patsy anxiously. 

“ No. Why should ye ? ” said she. 


70 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“They could stand the smoke for a little 
while. If you ’re ashamed of smoking, ye 
can quit for the rest of your life when the 
hour is up, but not before.” 

Then came a time of great anxiety. The 
boys could see the ladies walking slowly 
toward the house. They were certainly 
coming to call on Mrs. Flannigan, they 
thought. . . . No, they stood in front 

of the next house, chatting with Mrs. 
Flynn. Then they came on again. Jimmie 
was just ready to crawl under the couch, 
when— they passed by the door. The boys 
gave sighs of relief. 

After a while it was half an hour. After 
another while — a very long while it seemed 
— it was three quarters of an hour. Then 
the clock tick-ticked from its place on the 
parlor table where Mrs. Flannigan had set 
it, and the boys watched its hands until 
they had almost reached the hour, when a 
voice said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Flanni- 
gan. Are the boys here ? ” 

Ralph and jack stood in the door-way, and 


Smoking 7 1 

Ralph had hardly spoken when they saw 
Patsy and Jimmie. 

“That they are,” said Mrs. Flannigan 
heartily. “ They ’re Just finishing their last 
cigarettes. Come in and wait for ’em.” 

The Miller boys waited, too surprised to 
laugh, even when they noticed the mirrors. 
In two mjnutes the Flannigan boys rose 
with a bound. “ May 1 throw away the 
rest of this stuff?” Patsy asked meekly. 

“ No,” said his mother. “ Both of ye put 
the boxes on the mantel, where they ’ll be 
right handy the next time ye feel like 
smoking.” 

Once outside, the Miller boys laughed, 
not in a mean way, but because they 
could n’t help it. 

“Say,” said Patsy, “I’ve quit smoking 
for good. “ So ’s Jimmie, have n’t you, Jim ? ” 

The younger boy nodded, cleared his 
throat, and said, “You bet.” 

“Now,” continued Patsy, “what’ll you 
fellows take to keep your mouths shut ? ” 

“That’s all right,” said Ralph, speaking 


72 The Millers and Their Playmates 

for both himself and Jack. “ We ’re chums 
and we won’t tell on you, but oh, fellows ! 
if you could have seen how you looked ! ” 
They were as good as their word, too. 
And when a sign appeared over the door of 
the playhouse they would not explain, even 
to Maggie, why it was put there. Perhaps 
Ralph suggested the sign, but Jack surely 
printed it, for it read: 


NO SMOKING ALOUD. 



CHAPTER V. 


A WEDDING. 


HE week after this the little Millers were 



•I very much puzzled. Aurelia was not 
ill. They asked her and she said that she 
was not. She was not cross. In fact they 
had never known her to be quite so agree- 
able. But she was different. Yes, that was 
it — she was very different. For instance, 
when Ralph asked her about some pieces of 
cloth for a kite-tail, she handed them to him 
and told him to “stir them well while they 
are cooking or else they will be lumpy.” 

“Stir what?” asked Ralph, thoroughly 
bewildered. 

“Why, the paste for your kite,” replied 
Aurelia. “ Wa’nt that what you were talk- 
in’ about?” 

“ No,” said Ralph, who had already stuffed 


73 


74 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the rags into his pocket. It was the cloth 
for the tail. The kite is all made.” 

“Oh, rags! ” said Aurelia, “ I ’ll get you 
some.” 

“ Why, Aurelia ! ” cried Ralph. “ You did 
give them to me. They ’re in my pocket.” 

“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Aurelia. 
“Where have my brains went to?” 

Then she gave him a hug and told him 
to run away. “I’m terrible drove with 
work this mornin’,” she said, “an’ 1 can’t have 
you boys messin’ around under foot.” 
Ralph went, yet when he passed the kitchen 
door again, ten minutes later, Aurelia was 
still standing in the middle of the floor and 
smiling. 

Both Jack and Helen found her acting 
queerly, and Helen declared that Aurelia 
stood ready to pour a dipperful of water into 
the range, as she went into the kitchen, 
while a stick of firewood lay in the sink. 

At dinner-time there were no potatoes on 
the table. Mrs. Miller rang for Aurelia and 
reminded her of them. 


A Wedding 


75 


“Sure enough,” said Aurelia. “I must 
have left ’em in the warmin’ oven,” and she 
vanished into the kitchen. They heard her 
hurrying to and fro for several minutes and 
then she reappeared with her face very red. 
“ 1 ’m dreadful sorry,” she said, “an’ 1 don’t 
•see how it ever happened, but 1 did n’t 
cook ’em. 1 brought ’em up from the cellar all 
right, but 1 must have set ’em down in the 
wrong place an’ forgot ’em.” 

“Never mind, Aurelia,” said Mr. Miller, 
“we have enough without the potatoes. 
It really does not matter at all.” And he 
went on carving without taking any more 
notice of her confusion. 

Jack noticed it, though, and watched her 
out of the room. “ Was n’t her face red ? ” 
he said. “ Mother, what is the matter with 
Aurelia to-day? She acts so queerly.” 

“I could n’t say,” replied his mother. “ 1 
think that she may have a good deal on her 
mind Just now. You know that grown 
people all do at times.” 

“I’m afraid she ’s going to be some 


76 The Millers and Their Playmates 

crazy,” said Helen solemnly. Would n’t 
you think folks were crazy when they put 
water into the kitchen ranges ? ” 

“No, no, my child,” said Mr. Miller 
quickly. “1 have done just such absurd 
things myself at times — but not lately. Now 
eat your dinners and be ready to start back 
to school on time.” 

When Mr. Miller and the children were 
gone and Aurelia’s work was done, she 
came to the room where Mrs. Miller sat sew- 
ing and asked if she were too busy to talk. 

“ 1 ’ve had a lot on my mind this mornin’,” 
she said, “ an’ 1 don’t know but maybe 1 ’ve 
acted a little mite queer at times. That was 
what ailed the potatoes that they did n’t get 
cooked this noon.” 

“1 hope it is not trouble, Aurelia,” re- 
marked Mrs. Miller kindly. 

“No, ma’am, it ain’t that. Oh, no, it 
ain’t that at all,” said Aurelia, twisting the 
corner of her fresh white apron. 

“Then perhaps it is happiness, Aurelia,” 
said Mrs. Miller, as she bent over her work. 


A Wedding 


77 


“1 hope it is that. You know we are all 
very fond of you and want to see you happy. ” 
“ Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Miller,” said Aurelia in 
a choked voice. “That ’s just it. You are 
so good to me an’ 1 ’m just clean broke up. 
You like my work all right, don’t you ? ” 

“ Why, yes, Aurelia,” said Mrs. Miller, 
quite alarmed, “has any one in the house 

been complaining? Have the children ” 

“ No, ma’am, ’’said Aurelia. “ Don’t never 
blame anything on to the children. I never 
see such good young ones in all my born 
days. Of course 1 know they ’re sort of 
naughty sometimes, but what 1 mean is 
they ’re always so good an’ kind, an’ never 
sassy to hired help, or anything of that sort. ” 
She stopped again and Mrs, Miller saw 
that she could not tell her perplexity unless 
somebody made her do so, 

“ Aurelia,” she said, “what is the matter?” 
“Matter enough,” answered Aurelia 
gruffly. “Mr. Hathaway wants me to 
marry him ! ” 

“Well, Aurelia! That ’s very pleasant. 


78 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Mr. Miller thinks him an excellent man., 1 
know he will make you happy,” said Mrs. 
Miller. “ Of course you have promised to, 
have n’t you ? 

“No, ma’am. Not yet, that is,” replied 
Aurelia. “Why, Mrs. Miller, 1 just can’t 
leave you an’ the children. 1 can’t noways. 
If it wa’ n’t for that, 1 ’d marry him quick- 
er ’n scat ! But 1 ’ve tried an’ tried to figger 
out how 1 could marry him an’ stay with 
you, an’ it simply can’t be did.” She hid 
her face in her apron. 

“Now, Aurelia,” said Mrs. Miller, “you 
stop crying. 1 am sure we can arrange it 
somehow. You see Mr. Miller and 1 thought 
that Mr. Hathaway loved you, and we have 
some plans half made. You have him come 
over to-night and we will plan together, but 
we won’t talk about it any more now.” 

The next morning Mr. Miller asked the 
children how they would like to go to a 
wedding. 

“Tin or crystal ? ” said Ralph. “ Or is it 
wood ? ” 


A Wedding 


79 


'‘Not an anniversary, my son,” explained 
Mrs. Miller, “ but a wedding.” 

“Oh 1” exclaimed Jack. “The kind of 
wedding where folks get married ? ” 

Mrs. Miller nodded. 

“ Course we ’d like it,” said the children. 
“Whose is it? Where’s it going to be? 
What will we wear ? ” 

“ You will wear your very best clothing, 
and the wedding will be in this house, and 
the bride will be Aurelia 1 ” 

There was a shouting and a scrambling, 
and Mr. and Mrs. Miller were left alone, 
while in the kitchen three excited children 
jumped up and down, and hugged Aurelia, 
and shouted, “Wish you many happy re- 
turns 1 ” Which, you know, was not at all 
what they should have said. 

And after a while Aurelia had a chance to 
tell them of the plans made the night be- 
fore. She was to marry Mr. Hathaway and 
live in his house, but would come over 
every day to work for the Millers, spending 
all her time at home after the work was 


8o The Millers and Their Playmates 

done. Then, when the new place was 
ready for the Millers, there would be a cosey 
little home for the Hathaways arranged up- 
stairs over the building where the poultry 
and the new auto were to be kept. Mr. 
Hathaway was to work for Mr. Miller, clip- 
ping the grass, attending to the garden, 
and working down-town when there was 
nothing to be done around the house. 

“And when is the wedding to be ?” they 
asked. 

“Well,” said Aurelia, “your mother 
says it is to be Saturday evenin', an' she 
settles most everything around this place, 
so 1 ’ 11 have to be spry an’ get ready, 1 
s’pose.” 

“ Say, Aurelia,” said Jack, “ won’t you let 
us children all be bridesmaids? ” 

“ Well,” replied Aurelia, with her eyes 
twinkling, “it doesn’t seem to me that 
you an’ Ralph have got just the right 
style for bridesmaids, but we ’ll find some 
sort of job for you that evenin’ so you won’t 
feel left out.” 


The Wedding 8i 

“ Children ! ” called their father. “ Come 
and eat your breakfast.” 

It would be useless to try to describe the 
excitement of the next few days. It was 
the first wedding for the three little Millers, 
and they did quite as many foolish things as 
poor Aurelia had done on that day when she 
was trying to decide whether to marry or to 
stay with the Millers, never dreaming that 
she could do both. All other work was set 
aside that week. Mrs. Miller closed her 
desk as soon as she had written a dozen 
wedding invitations, and spent most of 
her time with Aurelia, helping in the kitchen, 
sewing in the upper hall, and planning, 
planning something all the time. Each 
child delivered four wedding invitations, 
and always stopped to tell the people all 
about it afterward. Once Helen ended her 
story by saying, “1 fought Aurelia was 
going to be crazy, but it was only because 
she was so busy finking.” 

All the Flannigans were invited, and 
Mrs. Flynn and Maggie, and several other 


82 The Millers and Their Playmates 

families from their street who had known 
Aurelia for years and had lived close to Mr. 
Hathaway and his mother. Aurelia’s sister 
came down from Binghamton, too, on Satur- 
day morning. 

It was a late fall, and cosmos and anemo- 
nes were still in full bloom outside, so the 
house was trimmed with them and an arch 
of evergreen set up in the bay-window 
where the bride and groom were to stand. 

All that the family had for supper that 
night was bread and milk, and they had to 
eat it from the kitchen table, too. But as 
they were almost too excited to eat, that 
did not matter in the least. 

Then Mrs. Miller put on her best white 
gown and dressed Helen, while Aurelia’s sis- 
ter helped her into her white gown, and the 
boys struggled into their white duck suits, 
helping each other and occasionally calling 
on their father for assistance. 

“Aurelia has helped us with a great many 
parties and good times,” Mrs. Miller had said. 
“Now this is the best chance we shall ever 


The Wedding 


83 


have to make a happy party for her, and 
everything must be exactly right. You must 
not forget that for a single minute.” 

And the little Millers had been much im- 
pressed and responded, “Yes, Mother!” 

When the bell began to ring Ralph and 
Jack took turns in answering it and directing 
people where to remove their wraps. The 
boys wore flowers in their button-holes and 
looked remarkably clean. Indeed, they 
could hardly have helped looking so after 
the thorough scrubbing which both took. 

After he had left the bath-room Ralph had 
inspected jack and said, “Well, jack, if it 
was for everyday, or even for church, I 
would n’t say anything about it, but since it 
is for her wedding, 1 really think you ought 
to wash behind your ears again — for Aure- 
lia’s sake.” And jack, who usually disliked 
to wash there, went back cheerfully to do 
it over. 

Mrs. Hathaway was there, very happy and 
looking decidedly handsome in her black 
dress. She sat in Mr. Miller’s arm-chair near 


$4 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the bay-window, and smiled on everybody. 
And Mr. Foster, the young minister, was 
there with his pretty little wife and their baby 
although the baby had never before been 
taken out in the evening. Now he sat on 
Mrs. Hathaway’s lap and cooed and crowed 
as though weddings were the jolliest times 
he knew. (Of course you remember that it 
was Mrs. Foster who had brought Mrs. 
Hathaway and her son together after they had 
lost each other for so many years.) Maggie 
wore the brand new scarlet cashmere which 
her mother had finished for her only the 
night before. She had scarlet ribbons on her 
long braids and the boys wondered why 
they had not sooner realized how pretty she 
was. 

Everybody laughed and talked, and when 
the last guests had removed their wraps 
Mrs. Miller whispered to the children and 
they stole softly up the back stairs with a 
message. A minute later Mr. Miller, who 
was standing by the front stairs, heard a 
whisper from above and said to Mrs. Miller, 


The Wedding 


85 


“They are ready, Christine.” And Mrs. 
Miller sat down to the piano and played the 
very same march which was played at her 
own wedding fifteen years before. 

Mr. Foster stepped into the bay-window 
with a small black book in his hand ; Mrs. 
Hathaway stood up beside Mr. Miller, who 
had quickly rolled the big chair out of her 
way ; Maggie and the Flannigans gazed with 
round eyes at the staircase — and down came 
the little wedding procession. 

First came Ralph and Jack, looking very 
solemn and somewhat fearful that they 
should not keep time with the music. Then 
followed Helen as a tiny maid of honor, and 
then Aurelia, leaning on Mr. Hathaway’s 
arm and looking — yes, really— looking hand- 
some, because she was so happy. They 
walked over to the bay-window and the 
boys stood on either side, while Helen was 
ready to take Aurelia’s simple bouquet of 
cosmos when Mr. Hathaway put the wed- 
ding ring on her finger. It was all over very 
quickly and sweetly, and then everybody 


86 The Millers and Their Playmates 

came up to congratulate the groom and 
wish the bride happiness, Mr. Miller and 
Mrs. Hathaway first, then Mrs. Miller 
and Aurelia’s sister, and then Helen and 
her brothers, and then everybody else. 

Before long Aurelia’s sister vanished into 
the kitchen, and soon Ralph and jack were 
passing dishes of pink and white ice-cream, 
while Helen followed with the cake. The 
guests were seated around the dining-room 
and of course the refreshments were first 
passed to the bride. She took a dish of 
cream, looked at it unhappily for a minute, 
and put it back onto the tray. 

“ Sakes alive 1 ” she said. “ If my sister 
ain’t gone to dishin’ that cream out with a 
spoon ! You boys take this cream to the 
children on the stairs, while 1 go an’ get her 
the ice-cream. 1 won’t be gone more ’n 
a minute, Fred. I know just where to lay 
my hands on it.” 

So the bride went into the kitchen and 
gave directions in the most matter-of-course 
way, returning in a few seconds to eat re- 


The Wedding 


87 


freshments and visit with her friends. She 
did not forget the absent ones either, for she 
called Ralph aside and told him to see that 
pieces of both kinds of cake were put away 
for Lucinda, whose grandmother was so ill 
that neither could come to the wedding. 

When the refreshments were eaten there 
was more visiting and looking at the pres- 
ents, for Aurelia’s friends had made the 
most of the chance to repay to her some 
of the kindness which she was always 
showing. And after that Mr. Flannigan sang 
a song for the company and Mrs. Miller 
played some lively music which set all the 
children dancing in a corner. 

Then Mrs. Foster said they really must 
go, or the baby would be cross all Sunday, 
and Mr. Foster said that if he did not go 
home early he would get mixed in his 
sermon the next day. Mrs. Flynn and 
Maggie had to go, so the Flannigans walked 
along with them, and then all at once every- 
body had gone but the Hathaways, and 
Aurelia was helping the old lady into her 


88 The Millers and Their Playmates 

jacket while Mr. Hathaway was talking with 
Mr. Miller. When that was done, Aurelia 
stepped into the kitchen to give a few last 
directions to her sister, who was to take her 
place in the house for a few days, and then 
she kissed the children all around, took her 
husband’s arm, and set off in the moonlight 
for her new home. 

“It’s all been the very nicest weddin’ 
that ever was,” she said. “ 1 thank you a 
thousand times for all you have did for me, 
an’ I ’ll be back to get breakfast for you 
Wednesday mornin’ sure. I don’t know 
when 1 ’ve ever seen such a happy sort of 
weddin’. Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye! ” they all shouted. “ Good- 
bye, Aurelia Hathaway!” 

The Millers turned from the moonlight 
outside to the rooms within, all bright with 
electricity. The scattered chairs, the ever- 
green arch, and the flowers looked almost 
too attractive to leave. They sunk into the 
nearest seats and talked about their good 
Aurelia, who had belonged to them ever 


The Wedding 


89 


since the children could remember, and who 
had been with Mr. and Mrs. Miller from the 
day they were married. Everybody loved 
her and felt that she was the wife of a fine 
man. 

The children began to wink slowly and 
sleepily and were started off to bed. Helen 
paused when half way up to the landing. 
“It was a nice wedding,” she said. “1 
fink we did a pretty good job.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

Hallowe’en. 

I T chanced that Hallowe’en fell on Friday 
night this year, something for which 
everybody was glad. Mrs. Millerand several 
of her friends had agreed to allow their child- 
ren to remain up a little later on Fridays 
than on otherevenings, and as Hallowe’en was 
always an especially interesting time it was 
pleasant to have the two come together. 
All the children of the neighborhood were 
buying pumpkins a week ahead of time and 
planning pranks for the thirty-first, good- 
natured pranks that should neither scare nor 
hurt people. 

But nobody dreamed what a wonderful 
Hallowe’en it was to be for the Saturday 
Club. The club was still a great success, 
although, now that its members were older 
90 


Hallowe’en 


91 


and had more other duties and pleasures, 
they met only once in two weeks. Profes- 
sor Harding and Mrs. Miller shared the care 
of preparing the programs. Mr. Miller 
showed his interest in many useful ways, 
and once in a great while, when the weather 
was stormy and he could leave the store, he 
attended a meeting. 

And now here was a letter addressed to 
the club and sent in care of Mrs. Miller. 
She opened it and read it aloud at the dinner- 
table on the day when it was received. It 
was from Mrs. Shaw, Lucinda’s grand- 
mother. 

“ Dear Mrs. Miller: 

Lucinda’s been a real good girl to wait 
on me when 1 was sick, and she did n’t make 
any fuss about missing Aurelia’s wedding, 
although she thinks a sight of Aurelia, so 1 
am going to have a party for her. 

“ 1 want all the Saturday Club boys and 
girls to come. John will be in town for them 
at half-past six, with the hay wagon and hay 


92 The Millers and Their Playmates 

in it. Let them bring their jack-lanterns 
along. Lucinda will ride in on the wagon 
and says she wishes Aurelia and her hus- 
band could come out too. 1 want to see 
what sort of man he is. Please fix that 
part of it for me. 1 will have a sort of picnic 
lunch for them and send them back at nine. 

“Yours truly, 

“Jane M. Shaw.” 

The children looked very sad. “ Ofcourse 
we can’t go, because it will be so late,” 
said Ralph, “but what fun it would 
be.” 

“ Nine o’clock ? ” said Jack and shook his 
head. “ I’ve never sat up so late in my life, 
’cepting Christmas Eves.” 

Helen could not talk. She simply dropped 
her knife and fork and looked. 

Mrs. Miller smiled. “ I shall let you go,” 
she said,, “but with this understanding, 
that by-and-by, when some other invitation 
to an evening party comes, you are not to 
tease and say, ‘You ought to let us, because 


Hallowe’en 


93 

we went to Lucinda’s and that was late, 
too. ’ ” 

“ We won’t tease,” promised the children 
eagerly. 

“Really,” said their father, “1 am sure 
Mother is letting you go because it is both 
Hallowe’en and Friday, and that will not hap- 
pen again for five or six years. It will be as 
long as that before it will be fair for you to 
say, ‘ We did then, so why may we not 
now?’” 

“All right,” said Ralph. “I’ll wait five 
years, anyhow, before I say anything of the 
sort. “ Five years 1 Why, then 1 ’ll be 
seventeen, won’t I, and Jack fourteen, and 
Helen twelve. Why ! 1 ’ll be ready for col- 
lege then, and like as not 1 can sit up till nine 
without asking I Dear me 1 lam growing 
old.” 

The news spread fast and Aurelia and 
Mr. Hathaway agreed to go out with the 
children. The Jack-o’-lanterns were begun 
at once and put in a cool place as soon as 
finished. It really seemed as though every 


94 The Millers and Their Playmates 

child in the neighborhood came over to the 
playhouse with a pumpkin and a knife the 
day after the invitation was received. Mag- 
gie Flynn was the chief artist. When the 
owner of a pumpkin told her what sort of 
face he wanted, she took the point of her 
knife and scratched the outlines on the rind. 
You would not have thought that two eyes, 
one nose, and one mouth could be combined 
to make such a great variety of express- 
ions. 

“Make mine look like a Chinaman,” 
begged Arthur Flemming. “ 1 tried to fix 
one at home and spoiled it, so my father 
gave it to the cow to eat and let me take 
this.” 

“That’s easy,” said Maggie. “Anyhow 
it is after you have done it once.” And she 
sketched in eyes that slanted up at the outer 
corners. Arthur went to work to cut away 
the parts which she had marked. 

Patsy would have no help. “ Sure it ’s 
none but Irish hands shall touch me purty 
Mickey,” he said with a grin. “ It ’s a great 



Maggie was the chief artist 






Hallowe’en 


95 

pity, that it is, that I can’t tache him to talk 
the brogue I used to.” 

“Oh, Patsy,” laughed Jack, “that’s ex- 
actly the way you used to talk. When are 
you going to talk that way again ? ” 

“ Never except in fun,” said Patsy soberly. 
“I’m not ashamed of it, and it ’s true 1 like 
the sound of it, but Professor Harding says 
that, since 1 was born in America and mean 
to go to college here, 1 ’d be wise to leave 
off the brogue.” 

“Oh,” said jack mischievously, “it is 
Just college, college, college with Patsy. 1 
believe he dreams about it when he is asleep. ” 

“ That 1 do,” admitted Patsy with a grin. 
“ And it is mighty glad you will be to find 
Mr. Flannigan there to receive you when 
you come.” 

“ Huh ! I’d have Ralph anyhow,” retorted 
Jack, for it was planned that all three boys 
should enter the college at Rockford, 
twenty-five miles away, where Professor 
Sinclair taught, the man whom Ralph and 
Jack had helped two years before. 


g6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ Ralph ’ll be gone before you get over 
there, sonny,” said Patsy. He’ll be off in 
some big city school fussing with engines, 
so you ’d better be good to your old friend 
Patsy.” 

“See here,” said Maggie, who thought 
this had gone far enough, “these splinters 
will make elegant teeth for your lanterns. 
Who wants some ?” 

So college affairs were left to wait while 
the lanterns were finished. At the last min- 
ute Maggie wedged a couple of pebbles into 
the eyes of hers in such a way as to make 
it look cross-eyed. She cut away the inner 
part of the rind, too, in lines above the eyes, 
so that when the candle was lighted the thin 
places would show as eyebrows. Surely 
Maggie had quick wits and clever hands. 

Friday night the good-natured John drew 
up in front of the Miller home with a 
“ Whoa 1” that might have been heard two 
blocks away. It was three minutes ahead 
of time, but every child was there on the 
walk, Jack-o’-lante.-n and all. The horses 


Hallowe’en 


97 


pranced and shied at the sight of all these 
bobbing, grinning faces, and John could not 
make them stand still. 

“You fallers haf to but oudt dose shack- 
lanterns,” he said. “ Dese horses, dey yump 
so veil dey see him. Yen ve gedt oudt to 
Misses Shaw’s, den you haf him lide oop 
some more.” 

You might think the children would have 
minded this, but they did not. There was 
so much else to delight them. There was 
Lucinda bouncing up and down in the 
wagon and calling out gay greeting to all 
her friends. There was the stout and good- 
natured Swedish driver, whom many of 
them had never seen before. And there 
were Mr. Miller and Mr. Hathaway, two 
strong, tall men, ready to help the boys and 
girls scramble into the high wagon and to 
pass their lanterns up to them. Mrs. Miller 
and Aurelia helped the children decide where 
to sit and how to stow away the precious 
lanterns. When all were seated, Aurelia 
and Mr. Hathaway climbed up beside the 


gS The Millers and Their Playmates 

driver and the load started. There was no 
moon, and John had a lantern fixed to the 
front of the wagon. That lighted the road 
ahead, and as to the children, the starlight 
was all they needed. 

Such nonsense as they talked, happy 
nonsense, and usually good-natured. It 
sounded something like this: “ 1 wish you ’d 
move along a little, my foot ’s asleep.” “ 1 
can’t. 1 ’m squeezed right up against Dor- 
othy’s lantern now.” “Say, Lucinda, how 
long will it take to get us there ?” “ Mrs. 
Miller said she thought it was about an 
hour’s ride.” “jiminy! Dow’Mhe horses 
trot along, though ! ” “ Where ’s my shawl ? 
I ’ve lost my shawl. Aurelia ! My shawl 
has fallen out ! Why-ee! 1 was sitting on it 
all the time and did n’t know it. ” “ 1 fink Berfa 
and I are getting pretty hungry already.” 
And then Lucinda’s clear voice saying: “ 1 
hope you will all be good and hungry. 
Grandma’s let me have things just the way 
1 wanted them and John has helped me, but 
we ’re not going to tell.” 


Hallowe’en 


99 


“ Oh tell! ” everybody begged at once. 

“No,” said Lucinda. 

Then came a general scramble to make 
her, and somebody stumbled over a jack-o’- 
lantern and somebody else over him until 
Aurelia interfered. 

“ Stop the team, John,” she commanded. 
“ Now every last one of you youngsters set 
right down where you was when we 
started, an’ don’t you budge till we get to 
Lucinda’s. This ain’t a trip for broken arms 
nor busted ribs, an’ some of you ’ll have ’em 
if you keep on that kind of foolin’.” 

Seventeen very meek children dropped 
into their places and stayed there. Aurelia 
told Mr. Hathaway to sing something and 
he started “ Old John Brown had a little 
injun.” John was greatly amused by the 
song, and by the time they turned in at 
Mrs. Shaw’s big gate he was roaring at the 
top of his strong voice, “ Vun liddle, two 
liddle, free liddle inyun,” and the children 
were beating time on the backs of their 
lanterns. LOrc. 


100 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Mrs. Shaw, with a shawl over her head, 
came out to welcome them, and they went 
into the parlor for a few minutes and sat 
around on the stiff haircloth furniture, while 
John was caring for the team. 

“Seems as if you’d ought to have your 
lunch in here in the dining-room,” began 
the old lady, who, you remember, was very 
deaf, “but Lucinda’s fixed things just the 
way she wanted them, and 1 hope you ’ll 
like it. She’d read about it in a book, or 
heard tell of it somewhere.” 

“ Oh, Grandma ! ” cried Lucinda, who en- 
tered the room at that minute. “You 
have n’t told, have you ? 1 wanted it all for 
a s ’prise, and John’s ready now, so we’ll 
start.” 

“Told?” said Mrs. Shaw. “No, 1 
have n’t told what you ’re going to do. And 
1 ’m not strong enough to help much, but 
Aurelia will.” 

“ Don’t you want us to take off our things, 
Lucinda ?” asked Rose Jacobs. 

“No,” said the little hostess. “I want 


Hallowe’en 


lOI 


you to keep them on and come right onto 
the porch and light your lanterns. Here are 
the matches.” 

She led the way to the side porch, where 
all the lanterns sat in a row on the edge, and 
got her own ablaze in a minute. Patsy 
helped Helen, Ralph helped Bertha, and Ben 
Stuart and Sammy Robinson made them- 
selves generally useful. The grown people 
stood in the door-way and watched, while 
Mrs. Shaw whispered to Aurelia the details 
of her little granddaughter’s plan. 

“Now,” said Lucinda, “we are ready. 
Everybody follow me in single file. We are 
going to walk through Grandma’s woods to 
the beach.” 

“ Jiminy ! ” said Ralph. “ Are you going 
ahead ?” 

“,Of course,” said Lucinda. “I’m the 
one that knows the way, so 1 ’ll have to.” 

“ My,” whispered Bento Sammy, “she’s 
brave for a girl, is n’t she ? ” 

“Ralph says she is nine, ’’replied Sammy, 
also in a whisper. 


102 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Are n’t you scared some ?” said Bertha 
Clarke to her dearest friend, Helen. 

“Scared? No!” replied Helen in great 
surprise. “ I fink it’s lovely. My mother 
tells us lots about the woods at night and 
says when I am big I may go sometime with 
her and Father. I guess she ’ll be ’sprised 
to know 1 ’ve been.” 

“ I was n’t scared either,” declared Bertha. 
“ 1 was just fooling.” But she dropped back 
to where Aurelia and Mr. Hathaway walked 
behind the little procession. 

On and on they went in the narrow foot- 
path, sometimes up and sometimes down, 
the dancing yellow rays from their lanterns 
lighting up the tree trunks and the brown- 
tipped brakes that grew beneath them. Once 
a party of weasels scampered under a log as 
they drew near, and several times they heard 
the rustling of birds in the branches, as they 
awakened and flew to a more quiet spot. 

As they approached the shore of the lake, 
and heard the little waves lapping on the 
sand, two or three children cried, “Why, 


Hallowe’en 


103 

there’s a fire !” and sure enough there was. 
John had made a big one in the afternoon and 
covered the coals carefully before driving to 
town. On his return he had hurried ahead 
and thrown on dry wood, and now here 
was a cheerful blaze on the very spot where 
the little Millers had first met Lucinda. 
Around the fire was a large circle of boards, 
laid on blocks of wood, where the party 
could sit. The lanterns were set around on 
these boards between the children, and Lu- 
cinda began to pass around the lunch bas- 
kets. They had plenty of good sandwiches 
and hot cocoa (John had brought that down 
from the house), and then each child had 
half a dozen marsh-mallows to toast on the 
end of a long stick. The night was a very 
mild one for that time of the year, and the 
tall trees around the little cove where they 
were kept off the slight breeze. 

“ It makes me think of being a soldier and 
having a camp-fire,” said Ben Stuart. “ My, 
but 1 ’d like to be one.” 

“Is this how the soldiers eat?” asked 


104 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Bertha Clarke. “ And do they always have 
marsh-mallows, too ? ” 

“Course not,” replied Helen promptly. 
‘ ‘ They have to carry their food in their satch- 
els and marsh-mallows would squash. My 
grandfather helped Mr. Grant when there 
was a war a while ago, and he told me all 
about it.” 

“Tell us, Helen,” urged Ben Stuart, who 
thought it great fun to have her tell long 
stories. 

“Well,” said Helen, who was really quite 
a chatterbox when she had the invitation 
to talk, “it was about like this: The peo- 
ple who lived down south were not doing 
the way they had promised to and Mr. Lin- 
coln said they must, and they said they 
would n’t, and so he said, ‘ My soldiers shall 
make you. ’ And so he told Mr. Grant about 
it and invited some men to go and help Mr. 
Grant make them. And he invited my 
grandfather and my grandfather said, ‘ Thank 
you, 1 ’ll be very happy to go.’ So he went, 
and they foughted and foughted ” 


Hallowe’en 


105 

“That word \s fought, Helen,” suggested 
Ralph softly. 

“That’s what 1 said,” replied Helen, 
quite loudly. “I said they foughted. 1 Used 
to say ‘ fighted ’ till 1 got too big, and knew 
better. Yes, they foughted and foughted, 
and the people down south would not mind 
Mr. Lincoln, so he said ‘ I will make all your 
slaves free, now will you mind ?’ And the 
people down south said they would try. So 
they did, and my grandfather and Mr. 
Grant did n’t fight any more, and my grand- 
father brought his gun home, and told us 
how brave the people were who lived down 
south and that it was too bad there had to 
be a war.” 

“ Tell us another story, Helen,” begged 
Sammy. “ Tell us something you made up 
all yourself.” 

“All right,” said Helen, “only 1 want to 
fmk a little first. Well, once upon a time 
there was a naughty little skirl. He was a 
red skirl and lived right in these woods. He 
had a nice mamma and a nice papa and nice 


io6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

little brothers, but he would play with 
other little skirls that were bad, and so he 
was bad, too, pretty soon. And his mamma 
scolded him and his papa spanked him, and 
he was saucy at them and imperdent. So 
his mamma sent him to bed without any 
supper, and in the night he waked up ’cause 
he was so hungry, and down near his tree 
he saw a fire with lots of people and some 
terrible fings sitting around it. And he 
fought the fings had come to eat him up 
’cause he was such a bad little skirl, and he 
waked his mamma right up and promised 
her he would be good for always and 
always.” 

“ And was he ?” asked Sallie James, who 
had found the story very interesting. 

“ 1 can’t tell that,” said Helen gravely. “ I 
[ink he will be good, but you know he has 
only just promised her now, so 1 can’t be 
sure.” 

“ Oh, Helen,” said Janice Field eagerly, 
“ were the people really us ? ” 

“’Course,” answered Helen. “That’s 


Hallowe’en 


107 


how 1 happened to know about it. And the 
skirls live in that big tree just back of you. 
They ’re looking at you now, only you can’t 
see them.” 

The younger children stared in silence at 
the tree, and even the older ones turned 
their heads that way before they thought. 

“1 wonder what is looking at us,” said 
Dorothy Flemming. “ 1 suppose there ar6 
lots of little creatures off there in the dark.” 

“ Don’t you like to feel sort of scared once 
in a while ?” asked jack. 

Three or four of the older children nodded 
their heads. Ben Stuart said: “ Pooh ! 1 
don’t know how it feels to be scared. The 
only thing that could scare me would be a 
ghost, and there ain’t any anyhow.” 

just here john pulled out his big silver 
watch and held it close to the light of Arthur 
Flemming’s lantern. “ Veil, I guess ve got 
to go home,” he announced. “ Mrs. Shaw, 
she say we go home at nine o’clock.” 

There was a general groan, but everybody 
got up and Mr. Hathaway showed them 


io8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

how to put out the fire by throwing damp 
sand on it, so that there would be no danger 
of a rising wind carrying a spark into the 
woods. 

“I say,” said Maggie, “let’s let all the 
folks who don’t like to feel scary go ahead 
with Aurelia and John, and let’s the rest of 
us give them a good start and then go on 
and talk about ghosts and wild-cats and ev- 
erything like that.” 

This plan brought out shouts of approval, 
and Rosa, Sallie, Bertha, Janice, and Helen 
went ahead with Aurelia, although Helen 
would really have preferred to remain 
behind. 

Mr. Hathaway was just putting the last 
sand on the fire when he heard Ben Stuart 
and Sammy Robinson planning to scare the 
rest by walking behind them and then 
screaming when they were half way to the 
house. Mr. Hathaway smiled and decided 
that he would walk behind them. 

They started off slowly enough with Lu- 
cinda ahead, and what stories they told 1 


Hallowe’en 


109 


Maggie was just finishing the story of Icha- 
bod Crane and the headless horseman, when 
Mr. Hathaway saw Sammy nudge Ben, and 
heard him whisper, “ In just a minute now.” 
Ben nodded. 

Just at that instant Mr. Hathaway, whom 
they had quite forgotten, laid a large hand 
on each boy’s shoulder. 

“ Ow-w-w 1 ” screamed Sammy. Ben 
dropped his lantern and ran. Mr. Hathaway 
picked it up. 

“ What ’s the matter?” asked everybody 
at once. Perhaps they were not frightened, 
but, — well, they looked so. Ben came 
sneaking back. 

“Guess 1 didn’t burn my finger very 
badly, after all,” said he, looking very hard 
at his left hand and reaching for his lantern. 
Maggie was suspicious. “ Was it be- 
cause you burned your finger that Sammy 
screamed ? ” she asked. 

Ben did not answer. He was fussing with 
his candle. 

‘‘ 1 — just — believe ” said Maggie slowly. 


no The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ that — you — were — both — scared — stiff! ” 

“Come, come,” urged Mr. Hathaway, 
“ John will tire of waiting for us.” He hurried 
them right along and there were no more 
ghost stories told. Ben and Sammy looked 
at him sharply, but he was perfectly grave. 
“1 hope I did not startle you,” he said to 
them later. “ I was just going to suggest 
that you might better not scare the others.” 

“Guess we did it, all the same,” said 
Sammy with a grin. 

“Yup ! Did it without half trying, ’’added 
Ben. 

Lucinda rode into town with them and 
they all had a good time. As they got far- 
ther and farther away from the dark woods, 
they began to talk about their fright. “Of 
course,” they all said, “we weren’t really 
scared, and it was such fun I Guess we ’ve 
had the best Hallowe’en of anybody in 
Winthrop.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

LUCINDA. 

F or a fortnight after Hallowe’en, life was 
very quiet for the little Millers and their 
friends. Their father thought it was better 
so. “ Dear me I ” he had said, as he pinched 
Helen’s cheek. “This child will grow old 
too fast if we let her go to weddings and 
evening parties at this rate. Mother. She 
will be like the little princess who had too 
many birthdays. We must reform.” And 
he tried to look very stern, an effort that did 
not at all deceive his three children. 

After about two weeks of quiet and con- 
tented work in school and home, Ralph, 
who was the restless one of the family, be- 
gan to wish that something would happen. 
“ 1 don’t much care what,” he said, “but 
something.” 


Ill 


1 12 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Even something unpleasant ?” asked 
his mother with a smile. “1 find myself 
feeling in that way sometimes, and then 1 
think how cosey and well and happy we all 
are, and 1 am afraid to wish for a change.” 

Ralph gave her a hug and a kiss, tucked a 
loose lock of hair back over her ear, and said, 
“ Well, I think I can worry along for a while 
the way things are,” laughed at himself, 
and was off. 

It was only a couple of days after this that 
Mrs. Miller was called from the sitting-room 
after supper, to the telephone. It was so 
near that the children could hear what she 
said, and were startled to hear her exclaim, 
‘‘Oh, that poor child 1 Certainly Aurelia can 
be spared fora few days.” 

When she returned there were tears in her 
eyes. “Children,” she said, “Old Mrs. 
Shaw has died very suddenly, and the 
neighbors found a letter in her writing ask- 
ing them to send at once for Aurelia if any- 
thing should happen to her. It seems that 
she feared this same illness which killed her.” 


Lucinda 


II3 

The children sat motionless for a minute, 
then Helen cried aloud. Jack sniffed and 
began a frantic search for his handkerchief. 
Ralph sat bolt upright. “And 1 was the 
one who wished that something would hap- 
pen and said 1 didn’t care what. Mother, 
does God let bad things happen just be- 
cause people talk that way?” 

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Miller. “ 1 am sure it 
would not make the slightest difference with 
His great plans because one restless little 
boy said such a foolish thing.” She 
gathered Helen up into her arms to comfort 
her, and went on to tell more of her thought 
about it. She was not the sort of person 
who preaches little sermons to all who are 
around her, but she was never afraid to talk 
to those she loved about her Heavenly 
Father. 

“ You see,” she said, “ Mrs. Shaw was old 
and feeble, and uncomfortable. She was so 
deaf that she could not hear the birds sing, 
or the waves lapping the shores of her beauti- 
ful farm She could not even understand 


1 14 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Lucinda, unless she spoke very loudly and 
close to her grandmother’s ear. And Lu- 
cinda was all that she had to live for. She 
was tired. Aurelia says she has suffered all 
the time since she was so ill last month, and 
that the doctor said she could never be well 
again. We must be glad for her that she 
can rest and hear and be happy again. And 
we must be very good to Lucinda.” 

“Now,” she added, as she gently slid 
Helen from her lap, “ 1 wish you children 
would help me by sorting these papers while 
1 am gone. If 1 am not back by half-past 
seven, go to bed alone. 1 ’ll return as soon 
as 1 can.” 

That was how the news came. Aurelia 
went out to the farm that very night, and 
remained there several days. When she re- 
turned Lucinda came with her and was left 
with the elder Mrs. Hathaway, while Au- 
relia came at once to Mrs. Miller. 

“Oh, Mrs. Miller,” she said, her words 
getting all mixed in her excitement, “ what 


Lucinda 


115 

do you suppose that old lady had been an’ 
went an’ did ? She left Lucindy to me 1 ” 

“To support?” asked Mrs. Miller 
anxiously. 

“No, ma’am,” just to have for my own 
little girl. The lawyer says that, with the 
farm an’ all, there ’s plenty 0’ money to pay 
for Lucindy’s keep an’ give her a first-rate 
education, but she ’ll need somebody to be a 
kind 0’ mother an’ father to her. It seems 
the old lady made up her mind about me 
the time we was out there with the lan- 
terns an’ she saw Mr. Hathaway.” 

“And what does he think of it ?” asked 
Mrs. Miller. 

“ Oh, he ’s pleased as can be, ’’said Aurelia. 
“ He was terrible took up with Lucindy the 
first time he laid eyes on her. He says it’s 
most too good to be true that after livin’ 
alone so many years, an’ thinkin’ his mother 
was dead, he should find her an’ all of a 
sudden have a whole houseful of folks.” 

So it was very quickly settled and Lucinda 
became Aurelia’s little girl. Of course she 


ii6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

was a sad and lonely child, but she was a 
brave one, and everybody was good to her. 
She lived in the tiny house on the back 
street and helped Grandma Hathaway, as 
she now called her, by washing dishes and 
dusting. Maggie almost always stopped for 
her on the way to school, and Helen was 
often waiting for them on the corner. After 
school she found Aurelia at home, and 
sometimes she went over with her when 
it was time to get supper, and stayed until 
the dishes were done, playing with the little 
Millers and eating supper, sometimes with 
them and sometimes with Aurelia in the 
kitchen. It was a great change from living 
with only a deaf old lady and the Swedish 
John, on a big farm. Lucinda missed her 
g:randmother very much, and shed a few 
tears every day, but Lucinda enjoyed living 
in town. She was voted into the Saturday 
Club at its first meeting, and returned from 
school nearly every day with some little 
gift that a schoolmate had thrust into her 
hand or laid upon her desk. 


Lucinda 


117 

Would you like to hear how Lucinda 
looked ? She was now nine, you know, 
and perfectly well. She had dark auburn 
hair, which hung in two long braids down 
her back, large gray eyes, with long lashes, 
and a pleasant and rather grave face. When 
she smiled she had little dimples, but she 
did not laugh so much as Maggie and Helen. 
She smiled when she was pleased. Helen 
and Maggie smiled nearly all the time any- 
how. Lucinda was just jack’s age, and they 
were great friends. 

Somehow, with Lucinda’s coming to town 
they began to make up new plays. She had 
been a lonely child, used to amusing herself 
without playmates, and so had come to 
devise all sorts of games, like being ship- 
wrecked on a desert island, or being chased 
and almost caught by wolves, or carrying a 
lantern and picking her way through a storm 
to save a train from being wrecked. Now, 
with so many companions all around, it 
seemed possible to play almost anything. 
Out of doors it was usually tag, or hide-and- 


ii8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

seek, or something of that sort, but on rainy 
or stormy days, when Lucinda came over to 
the Miller playroom, such games were made 
up as no little Miller had ever thought of 
devising. 

A theatrical troupe played Uncle Tom's 
Cabin in Winthrop that year, and Mr. Miller 
took Lucinda with his own children. It was 
the first time that any of them had been to 
the theatre, and they sat on the front edges 
of their chairs and laughed and wept and 
exclaimed, as the old story was enacted be- 
fore them. On the way home Lucinda 
whispered to Jack, “You just wait till the 
next stormy day. We’ll act Uncle Tom's 
Cabin ourselves.” 

For once they really wished for a stormy 
day. You see it was a rule that they should 
use the playroom only in bad weather or on 
Sundays. At other times they must be 
out-of-doors. 

About four days afterward the weather 
was bad enough for anybody. The children 
raced homeward in great glee, and clattered 


Lucinda 


1 19 

joyfully up to the playroom, jack had been 
told to keep on his rubber boots, because he 
was to be the cruel slave-owner Legree, 
and one could not be a good Legree without 
boots. 

“Now,” said Lucinda, “we must get 
dressed. Helen will have to be little Eva, 
because she is the smallest and her hair is 
the right color, jack will be Mr. Legree 
and Ralph must be Uncle Tom. 1 ’ll be 
Topsy. O dear! I just wish we had more 
children here. Maggie could be Miss Ophe- 
lia, you know, and the Flannigan boys 
could be Mr. St. Claire and that funny Mr. 
Marks, the lawyer. Can’t one of you boys 
run over to get them ? ” 

“It’s no use,” said Ralph. “The boys 
have to stay a long time after school to- 
night, and Mrs. Flynn is sick, so Maggie 
has to help her iron.” 

“Who’ll be Eliza with the baby, and 
jump onto the ice and run away?” asked 
jack. “1 like that part. It is so exciting 
when the bloodhounds and the bad men 


120 The Millers and Their Playmates 

are after her and almost get her, but not 
quite.” 

“ Perhaps I ’ll be Eliza, too,” said Lucinda. 
“1 ’ll be all blacked up, you know, so I can 
just as well.” 

“What ’ll we do for the bloodhound?” 
asked Jack.” “Would Nebuchadnezzar 
do? ” 

“We might try him,” replied Lucinda 
doubtfully. “1 don’t know what sort of a 
bloodhound a cat would be.” 

“ And Jack can be Marks, too,” suggested 
Ralph. “ He ’d have time when he was n’t 
being Legree.. He could take off his boots 
to be Marks, so it would always show 
which he was.” 

The principal parts were settled in this 
way and the actors began to dress. Little 
Eva’s hair was unbraided and combed out 
and a night-dress put on over her dark 
frock. Jack got the mucilage bottle and 
stuck on an old false moustache. It was 
coal-black and looked rather queer with his 
straw-colored hair. At first it kept drop- 


Lucinda 


121 


ping off, so he ended by holding it and 
putting his head over the register to dry 
the mucilage. After that it stayed on, al- 
though in holding it had become slightly 
twisted, so one end was somewhat higher 
than the other. That is to say, it stayed on 
for a while. 

Lucinda and Ralph blacked each other’s 
faces, Lucinda having found out that burned 
cork was the best thing to use and got 
some ready the day after they went to the 
theatre. They got it on very well, too. 
Lucinda would not have any on her neck 
and wrists for fear of soiling her dress, and 
that made the effect rather spotted, but 
Ralph had never yet spoiled a game for the 
sake of his clothing, so he blackened all the 
skin that showed, even working the cork 
up into his hair. 

The actors who did not happen to be on 
the stage at any particular time sat down 
in front of it and were audience, the division 
between the stage and the bare floor being 
shown by a chalk mark on the bare floor. 


122 The Millers and Their Playmates 

The play was not presented quite as they 
had seen, some parts having been forgotten 
and others left out for lack of actors. Eva’s 
teaching Uncle Tom to read came first. 

Ralph, as the old slave, spelled d-o-g and 
c-a-t on his slate, and got them wrong and 
had to rub them out, until Eva became 
quite discouraged and said, “Now see here, 
Ralph — 1 mean Uncle Tom — don’t you write 
‘ cat ’ with a k again ’cause 1 ’ve said all the 
fings 1 can remember about Eva’s saying, 
and it ’s time Eliza was escaping, anyhow.” 

“ Uh-uh,” said one of the audience, “ Mr. 
Legree has to buy Uncle Tom first and 
whip him.” 

“1 don’t remember which does really 
happen first,” said his companion, “ but 
1 ’d just as lives let Legree have his turn 
first at acting, and then he can take off his 
boots and be all ready to be Marks, you 
know.” 

“All right,” said Jack. “This’ll be my 
whip,” and he picked up an old maple branch 
which had once been used for a signal flag. 


Lucinda 


123 


Then followed a truly terrible scene, for 
the cruel Legree, in his rubber boots, strode 
up and down the stage and acted exceed- 
ingly cross, saying “ Gosh ! ” or “Thunder!” 
nearly every time he turned around, and 
pretending to chew tobacco and spit. Poor 
old Uncle Tom, who had just been bought 
by Legree, said “Marster” a great many 
times, and was finally whipped until he fell 
down on the floor and howled. 

Of course it was not real crying, any more 
than the whipping had been a real whipping, 
but it was such a good imitation that Aurelia, 
who had come over early to get supper, 
hurried upstairs to see what was the matter. 
When the door opened Uncle Tom raised 
his head from the floor and said, “It’s all 
right, Aurelia. 1 ’m only making believe, 
you know, because I ’m being Uncle Tom.” 
Then he flattened himself on the floor and 
shrieked again. 

“ Sakes alive ! ” exclaimed Aurelia. “An’ 
that ’s what you youngsters call fun, is it ? 
Well, it ’s all right, if you enjoy it, but 1 ’d 


124 The Millers and Their Playmates 

ruther have my fun scrubbin’floors or cleanin’ 
fish ! ” She closed the door and went back 
to the kitchen. 

“You did that first-rate,” declared Lu- 
cinda. “ Ralph hollered lots louder than the 
theatre man did, and I like it better this 
way. Mow I ’ll be Eliza.” 

Helen’s biggest doll was hunted up to be 
the baby in Eliza’s arms, and Nebuchad- 
nezzar was brought up from a nap by the 
sitting-room fireplace. Lucinda gave direc- 
tions to Ralph, who was to start him, and 
then climbed onto a chair at the left. 

“This will be the river-bank,” she said. 
“Now when 1 get half-way across the 
river on the ice (that’s about as far as 
where Helen is sitting), you set Neb after 
me.” 

She balanced herself on the chair, held the 
doll tightly to her, wrapped in an old shawl, 
glanced fearfully over her shoulder, whis- 
pered, “ They are pursuing me ! They have 
the blood-hounds ! My child, I must save 
you ! ” and jumped. 


Lucinda 


125 


Nebuchadnezzar, who had been wriggling 
around in Ralph’s arms, was now thrown 
gently after the frightened Eliza, but refused 
to chase her. Instead, as soon as he could 
get his balance and turn around, he bolted 
for the door and mewed pitifully to be let 
out. Jack climbed to the chair, or rather 
river-bank, from which Eliza had jumped, 
and made a great fuss because he had failed 
to catch her. 

And now, after a short time spent In try- 
ing to comfort Nebuchadnezzar, the final 
act of the play was arranged. Little Eva 
was placed on the old couch, while Topsy 
knelt beside it. Jack, whose moustache had 
dropped off, decided to be Mr. St. Claire, 
the father of little Eva, and Ralph was put 
in hastily as another servant. 

“You know,” Lucmda said, “they had 
just a lot of people to end up with, and 
Uncle Tom is dead, so you can’t be that. 
You just be any old negro you want to. 
And you must all cry like everything just as 
soon as little Eva dies.” 


126 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Do 1 cry, too?” Helen asked, sitting 
bolt upright again. 

“No — no,” answered Lucinda, hurriedly. 
“ Now don’t get all mussed up again. 1 had 
you all fixed. You must just whisper real 
loud, ‘ Good-bye, Papa. Good-bye, Topsy. 
Be a good girl.’ And then you must shut 
your eyes and lie still while we cry.” 

It was done quite as they had planned it. 
The only difference was that Just as little 
Eva closed her eyes, and the wailing began, 
Mrs. Miller returned from down-town with 
a dripping umbrella and an armful of par- 
cels. She smiled and said to herself (for 
she had the habit of talking aloud when 
alone), “1 suppose that is the play which 
they have been planning. 1 believe 1 ’ll go 
up.” 

She turned the knob gently and opened 
the door while all the actors had their 
eyes closed or buried in their handkerchiefs. 
When Topsy remarked, “Well, 1 guess 
we’ve cried long enough,” they were sur- 
prised by hearty applause from the doorway. 


Lucinda 


127 

“ How long have you been there? ” asked 
Ralph. 

“ Wasn’t 1 a nice Eva ? ” demanded 
Helen. 

“About one minute. First-rate,” replied 
Mrs. Miller, answering both questions at 
once. 

“ We ’ll play it all over for you, if you 
can stay up here,” offered Lucinda. 

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Miller. “I’d 
love to see it all, and I will sometime, but 1 
am getting up a troupe of my own just now 
and shall present a play called ‘Supper,’ 
in about fifteen minutes. The actors in 
that play will be all white. Any of you 
who wish may have a part. The play 
will be presented in the dining-room. 
Good-bye! ” 

And she hurried down to remove her 
damp wraps. 

“Is n’t your mother funny ?” exclaimed 
Lucinda. “Somehow she always says 
something that I did n’t think she was 
going to.” 


128 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ 1 know,” agreed Ralph, “ and somehow 
she never seems at all old to me. 1 kind 
of forget that she ’s grown up. Come on, 
let ’s get washed. Wish now that 1 had n’t 
blacked my ears.” " 


CHAPTER VIII. 


GRANDPARENTS. 


HRISTMAS was coming, and every day 



now somebody would open the front 
door of the Miller home, with a warning, 
“Shut your eyes until I get past. Don’t 
you look till 1 say you may, because 1 have 
a present you must n’t see! ” 

The trunk-room, where the wrapping- 
paper and twine were kept, was a very 
popular place. Bureau drawers and closet 
shelves were laden with queerly shaped 
packages, all labelled with loving little mes- 
sages. Joy was everywhere, and the best 
— ^the very best— part of it was that Grand- 
father and Grandmother were coming to 
spend Christmas in the Miller home. 

It was exactly two years since they had 
been in Winthrop. In fact they had not 


130 The Millers and Their Playmates 

been there since you first knew Ralph and 
Jack and Helen, and it was the longest time 
that they had ever passed without seeing 
their grandchildren. Because they had set 
several other dates for coming and had been 
disappointed, Grandmother had not written 
positively about this visit until a week be- 
fore Christmas. Surely you do not need to 
be told how the children felt. You know 
how you would feel if you had only two 
grandparents and had not seen them in two 
years, and then heard that they would be 
in your home in a week. Well, the little 
Millers felt exactly that way. 

“There ’s only one part 1 don’t like about 
it,” said jack, “and that is their coming so 
soon. There are lots of things 1 want to 
get done first.” 

“ Like what ? ” asked Helen. 

“Oh, different things,” replied jack. 
“There’s our desk upstairs to be put in 
order, and our bookshelves, and my end of 
our closet, and then there are all my things 
in the playroom, and 1 ’d like to get some 


Grandparents 1 3 1 

of my toys mended, espeshually some that 
Grandfather gave me. And 1 wish I could 
find the knife Grandmother sent me before 
she gets here. And if we only could get our 
playhouse all covered with tar paper and a 
window put in it, perhaps Grandfather 
and Grandmother could come out and 
make candy or something with us 
there.” 

“ Well, I guess I have my job to do,” said 
Ralph regretfully. “1 don’t care so much 
about things, although of course 1 do want 
to slick up some, but Grandmother dislikes 
slang — even the very nicest slang there is — 
and 1 ’ll have to break myself of it in a 
hurry, jiminy! I do sort of wish they 
would n’t come quite so soon myself! ” 

“ Humph ! ” said Helen. “ I ’d like them 
to be here right now. I wish they were 
down by the corner this minute.” 

“Why do you wish them down there?” 
asked Mrs. Miller, who had just come into 
the room.” 

“’Cause if they were out there, then 


132 The Millers and Their Playmates 

pretty soon they would be in here,” replied 
Helen promptly. 

“ If here is where you want them to be, 
why don’t you wish for them to be right 
here ? ” asked Ralph teasingly. 

” Because I would rather see them coming, 
and open the door to let them in,'” said Helen 
very decidedly, and nobody tried to tease 
her after that. 

Jack was still worried for fear he should 
not be able to do all the little tasks which 
he had named. His mother assured him 
that there was time to do a great deal, and 
that if part were undone she was sure that 
the grandparents would still have a de- 
lightful time. 

“ But perhaps I ’ll forget some of the most 
important ones,” said jack, who was nat- 
urally fond of order and sometimes became 
a little fussy about it. 

“Let me suggest,” said his mother. 
“Make a list and put the most important 
items first. Put off fixing the playhouse 
until Grandfather is here. You know he is 


Grandparents 


133 


very fond of such work, and he will show 
you and Ralph the best way to go about it. 
When you have time to work, do the first 
thing on the list and cross it off, then the 
next, and so on. You will manage it all 
right, 1 am sure.” 

“Funny list I’d have if 1 tried that with 
my slang,” chuckled Ralph. “ It would be 
‘ Don’t say Jiminy,’ ‘ Don’t say gosh-wallo- 
per,’ ‘ Don’t say gee,’ and so on. And then, 
when 1 wanted to cross some of them off, 
the only way 1 could do would be to sit 
down and not say some of those things.” 

“And then,” he added after a pause, “ 1 
suppose that after I ’d crossed one off I ’d 
probably say, ‘Jiminy, but 1 ’m glad to cross 
that off!’ 1 believe that sometimes not 
doing things is harder than doing things;” 

“And the moral of that is — ” began his 
mother, quoting from Alice in IVonder- 
land. 

“ And the moral of that is,” said Ralph 
with twinkling eyes, “‘Go and wash my 
hands.’” And he ran away from a little 


134 The Millers and Their Playmates 

lecture that he thought he had reason to 
expect. 

The days came and the days went. Every 
morning a new one began, and every even- 
ing another one ended. And when you 
come to think of it that is always the way 
with days, whether we want them to hurry 
or to go slowly. Jack made fine headway 
on his list and Ralph had at least got as far 
as correcting himself after using slang. 
Helen flew around in her usual happy and 
quiet way, always busy and full of plans. 
At last, the very day before Christmas, the 
children awakened with a shout, for at ex- 
actly fourteen minutes past twelve, if the 
train was on time, Grandfather and Grand- 
mother would be at the station ! 

At eleven o’clock the children began pre- 
parations for meeting them. They hurried 
desperately, and then had to sit still half an 
hour, while their mother gave the rooms 
little touches here and there, and then rushed 
away to change her dress. 

“ Does n’t she look happy, though ? ” said 


Grandparents 1 3 5 

Ralph. “ 1 like to see her eyes shine that 
way.” 

“ 1 asked her this morning if she was glad 
they were coming,” remarked Helen, “and 
what do you fink she said ? She said she 
was too happy to sleep last night. Did you 
know folks was ever too happy to sleep ! ” 

“Come, children,” called their mother’s 
voice. “ Ralph, tell Aurelia that we are 
going, and that if the train is late 1 will 
telephone her from the station, jack, please 
put another stick of wood in the fireplace. 
Helen, please take my umbrella from the 
stand and open it outside. There ! Now 
we are ready ! ” 

The train was on time and the children 
were delighted. “Does it look good to 
you ? ” they asked their mother. 

“Good?” said she. “I’d rather smell 
the smoke from that locomotive than the 
finest perfume in the world.” 

“Why ?” said Helen. 

“ Wait until you have had to go without 
seeing your father and mother for two long 


136 The Millers and Their Playmates 

years,” she replied. “Then you will know 
why. There they are ! ” 

Grandfather was a plump and rosy old 
gentleman, with a white beard. Grand- 
mother was tall also, and looked like Mother 
grown older and a trifle stouter. What lots 
of questions they asked — and answered — 
while Mr. Miller, who reached the station 
as the train did, was arranging to have their 
trunks sent up. From then until bedtime 
the questions and answers lasted. The 
children hardly wanted to go to the church 
for the Christmas Eve exercises, but finally 
went with Aurelia and Lucinda for an hour. 

When they returned, the stockings were 
hung in the library, one, two, three, four, 
five, six, seven ! Helen dumped the remain- 
ing candies from the tiny tarleton stocking 
sewed with red worsted, which she had 
received at the church, and hung it up in 
the eighth place for Nebuchadnezzar. “He 
might have a new ribbon for his neck, or a 
bell, or somefing,” she said. “Anyhow, 1 
don’t want any of the family left out.” 


Grandparents 1 3 7 

“What if some of the gifts won’t go into 
a stocking ? ” said Grandfather. 

“ Pin ’em onto the toe,” replied Jack. 

“ What if it is something you cannot 
pin ? ” asked Grandmother. 

“ Oh, an engine, or something like that?” 
asked Ralph. “Just put it down somewhere 
handy. Trust us to find our presents if they 
are anywhere on the place.” 

The children went to bed. The older 
people visited by the fire. Only once did 
any one break the children’s promise not to 
ask more questions. Perhaps it was not 
really broken then, but Jack pattered to the 
head of the stairs and called, “ Mother ! 
Mother ! ” 

“ What is it ? ” said she. 

“ I wanted to tell you,” said he, “ 1 thought 
of another question, but 1 ’m not going to 
ask it till morning.” 

“So did 1,” added Helen. “It’s about 
somefing of Grandma’s.” 

“ All right,” said their mother. “ That is 
the better way. And if you think of any 


138 The Millers and Their Playmates 

more questions please do not even tell me 
that until morning.” 

You remember how the Millers always 
formed a line with the youngest ahead when 
they went in for their gifts ? They did so 
again this year, and Helen carried Neb, who 
seemed wonderfully interested in his own 
stocking. Jack thought this very remark- 
able, until he saw him standing on his hind 
feet and trying to chew the toe of it. Then 
he discovered that it was the smell of a tiny 
package of raw meat which had so attracted 
him. 

It would be impossible to tell of all the 
gifts that everybody had. The big clothes- 
basket was running over with papers and 
the little basket was full of string before half 
of them were undone. Grandmother had 
given each of the boys a chest of tools, and 
Helen a charming little tea-set of real china, 
with scarlet handles and gold lines. But 
no child had found any gift from Grand- 
father. There was a good deal of hunting 
around the rooms before anything was said. 


Grandparents 


139 


and the dear old getleman’s face was more 
smiling every minute. Finally Helen spoke. 
“Could n’t you pin them onto the toes?” 
said she. 

Grandfather shook his head. “ It was 
too heavy,” he said. “ Besides it is just 
one gift for the three of you, and 1 could 
not fasten it to three stockings at once.” 

“Where is it?” demanded Ralph. “I 
can’t wait any longer.” 

“ You said that you could find it if it were 
anywhere on the place,” replied Grand- 
father. “Now is your chance to prove it.” 

Ralph pouted his lips for a minute, but 
laughed and spoiled the pout, jack said, 
“1 believe he put it on the porch just to 
tease us,” and darted to the front door. The 
shades had been down so that he could not 
see out. 

“ Oh ! ” he gasped. “ Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! ” 

“ What is it ? What is it? ” cried Ralph 
and Helen, crowding up behind him. 

There, right on the porch and tied to the 
railing, was the prettiest little gray burro 


140 The Millers and Their Playmates 

that any of them had ever seen. A saddle 
was on his back, a bridle was ready for a 
rider’s hand, and tied onto the saddle with 
a bit of scarlet ribbon was a card which 
read, “Merry Christmas to the three little 
Millers from Grandfather.” 

“Oh, may I ride him?” asked Jack. 

“ 1 am the oldest,” said Ralph meaningly. 
“/ am ready," said Helen, who had 
quietly stepped back and slipped into her 
wraps while the others were staring. 

“That is businesslike,” exclaimed Grand- 
father. “ Everybody believes in giving la- 
dies the first turn, eh, boys? ” 

“Of course,” said they heartily, and hur- 
ried to get on their own coats and caps. 
Billy was led down the steps and Helen 
seated astride of his back. Grandfather, 
who could not realize that Helen was so 
old, wanted to walk beside Billy and steady 
her, but she objected and rode slowly up 
and down the sidewalk in front of the 
house. “1 like it,” she said. “1 like the 
feeling when he jiggles softly, and does n’t 



Helen rode slowly up and down the sidewalk. 




Grandparents 141 

it sound cute when he sets down his dear 
little feet!” 

“I know what we ’ll do this morning,” 
exclaimed Ralph, as they went in to break- 
fast, after the last turn on Billy. “Let’s 
take turns riding Billy when we go out with 
the baskets for poor people. And then— O 
Jack! This afternoon let ’s ask Father if 
we may not use our new tools and make a 
little snow-plow for Billy to draw.” 

“Yes, sir, let ’s! ” agreed jack. 

Billy was kept going so much during the 
morning that at noon Mr. Miller insisted he 
should have a long rest in the barn. “ He 
is not to be taken out again,” he said, “ un- 
til you have finished the snow-plow and are 
ready to use it. Then you may take him 
out for an hour, but after that I expect 
Helen to serve us tea from her new tea-set, 
and 1 advise you boys to fix up neatly and 
drink tea with the rest of us.” 

Scraps of lumber were hunted over, with 
Grandfather near to advise as to choice, and 
then the measuring, sawing, and hammer- 


142 The Millers and Their Playmates 

ing went on busily in that part of the cellar 
where Mr. Miller’s work-bench stood. At 
four o’clock the snow-plow was done and 
had been carried up the outside cellar-way. 
Ralph and Jack went for Billy, but soon re- 
turned half crying. “ There is n’t any way of 
hitchin’ him to it,” jack explained, “unless 
we tie it to his tail.” 

“Dear me! Dear me!” exclaimed his 
grandfather. “ 1 ’ll have to help you hitch 
up. 1 forgot that you boys are not used to 
horses. And 1 forgot to tell you where to 
look for the harness. Of course, 1 brought 
a harness, for you will need it when you 
hitch Billy to your sleds or to the lawn- 
mower on the new place.” 

“ Oh, goody 1 ” cried all the children to- 
gether, and Helen added, “ If all 1 ’d have 
to do would be to drive Billy, 1 b’lieve 1 
could lawn some of the grass myself” 

Now Billy was hitched to the plow and 
work began. Helen was allowed to snug- 
gle down in the front corner of the triangu- 
lar plow, while first one boy and then the 


Grandparents 


143 


other stood behind her and drove. About 
two inches of snow had fallen since people 
had shovelled it away in the morning, and, 
after the Miller walk had been cleared, Billy 
was driven all around the neighborhood to 
show other people how the new plow 
worked. 

“That is a good advertisement for the 
firm of ‘ R. and J. Miller, Doers of Odd 
Jobs,’” said Mr. James, as he looked at his 
nicely cleared walk. He had come out with 
his snow shovel just as the boys drove 
along. At that minute a bright idea struck 
Ralph. 

“We would like the job of plowing off 
your snow every time it storms,” he said, 
for Ralph and Jack still kept the position as 
errand-boys and general helpers for the 
neighborhood, which they had taken two 
years before. 

“What are your terms?” asked Mr. 
James. 

“ 1— I don’t quite know,” replied Ralph 
slowly. “ Whoa, Billy. Would we charge 


144 The Millers and Their Playmates 

by the depth of the snow or by the length 
of your walk ? ” 

“ 1 should think by the length of the 
walk,” said Mr. James. “ The depth of the 
snow makes but very little difference when 
it is removed with a plow. With shovelling 
it is different.” 

“1 tell you what,” said jack, who had 
been walking behind the plow, “ we might 
do it for a penny a rod every time, and then 
if you wanted us to do any inside your 
yard you could measure that up too.” 

“That is fair,” said Mr. James. “I’ll 
count on you, then, every time, but 1 shall 
want it attended to early in the morning 
when it snows at night.” 

“Yes, sir,” cried the boys. “G’ ’long, 
Billy! ’’and they were as far along as Mr. 
Clarke’s before they remembered to call 
back, “Thank you !” 

“Tell you what,” said Jack, “ Let ’s get up 
early to-morrow and hunt up some more 
customers.” 

“ All right, sir,” agreed Ralph. 


Grandparents 


145 


“ 1 wish I was a boy,” said Helen. “ No, 
I don’t either, ’cause then I would n’t have 
my tea-set. I fink 1 ’ll go in now and get 
the tea ready. Mother said 1 could have 
some other fings to eat with it, too. Hello, 
Lucinda, come in with me and we will 
make the tea together.” 

Jack took Helen’s place in the plow, but 
was soon standing beside Ralph as he drove. 
“Let ’s each take one line,” he said, “and 
go around among the trees and drifts in the 
garden.” 

With much shouting and singing they 
turned into their own garden. The whole 
family flocked to the door to see them and 
to call them in to tea. Billy was headed 
toward the front door. 

“ Hi! Hi! Hi!” cried Jack, waving his free 
arm in the air. “Make way for the won- 
derful ‘ R. and J. Miller, Doers of Odd ’ ” 

At that moment the point of the plow hit 
some hard object under the snow, which 
stopped it suddenly. Of course the boys 
plunged headlong into the drifts by which 


10 


146 The Millers and Their Playmates 

they were surrounded. Four wildly wav- 
ing legs were all that could be seen of R. 
and J. Miller. Billy stood patiently, moving 
only his long ears. 

After a mighty floundering, the two boys 
came to sight. Ralph gathered up both 
reins. Jack brushed some of the snow from 
his neck and face and finished his sentence 
as though nothing had happened. 

“Jobs,” said he. 


CHAPTER IX. 

HELEN IS ILL. 

H OW Helen took the cold nobody ever 
knew, and it was all the stranger be- 
cause neither she nor her brothers were at all 
easily chilled. Every member of the family 
had a different idea as to how it happened, 
but, however it was, the little girl had a 
dreadful cold on her lungs and had to stay 
in bed downstairs in her mother’s room. 

“ It is too bad that if this had to come it 
should be while you are here,” Mrs. Miller 
had said to her father and mother. 

“No,” said her mother. “If it had to 
come 1 am glad that it was during our visit, 
since we can help you care for Helen.” 

As for the little girl herself, of course it 
was very hard to have a cough and a sore 
chest and to take bad-tasting medicine, and 
to have that cold and slippery thermometer 
147 


148 The Millers and Their Playmates 

put under her tongue every little while to 
show whether she had more or less fever. 
But then there were some pleasant things 
about it, too, for Grandfather told her war 
stories and Grandmother taught her the 
deaf and dumb alphabet, so that she could 
spell out simple words on her fingers, when 
she was not allowed to talk. 

Nebuchadnezzar used to stroll in every 
morning when the sunshine was streaming 
through the east windows and across her 
bed. He would stand a minute with his 
forepaws on the edge of the bed, make a 
few soft sounds way down in his throat, 
and then spring up beside her. After that 
he would wash himself all over, curl down, 
and take a nap. 

Grandmother suggested that they should 
study Helen’s spelling lessons at home, 
after she had learned to talk on her fingers. 
So Bertha Clarke brought in a list of the 
words every day, and Helen studied them 
until she could spell them all perfectly in 
the deaf-mute alphabet. 


Helen is 111 


149 


It was when she was well enough to be 
out of bed that she had to miss the big 
Sunday-school sleigh-ride, and that made 
her cry until her eyes were all red and her 
nose stuffy. “ Oh, don’t you fink it is too 
bad ? ” she said over and over again. “ And 
there is n’t a single little boy or girl sick but 
just me.” 

Mrs. Miller stroked her hair and wiped 
tears from her own eyes. “It is hard, 1 
know,” she said, “but it would not do for 
you to go.” 

“If it was next week I could, couldn’t 
1 ? ” asked Helen. 

“Why, yes, probably,” said Mrs. Miller. 

“ But then,” sobbed Helen, “ it is n’t next 
week, and when I ’m well there prob’ly 
won’t be any sleigh-ride party. And sleigh- 
riding is the most fun of any sort of riding, 
’less it is riding on a train.” 

“ How would you like, ’’said Grandfather, 
“to ‘go a piece ’ with Grandmother and me 
when we leave here ? ” 

“Go a piece?” asked Helen. “Why 


150 The Millers and Their Playmates 

may n’t I walk way down to the station ? ” 

“ 1 mean a piece on the cars,” explained 
Grandfather. “You know we have to take 
the morning train to Rockford and wait there 
a few hours before taking the other train 
which will carry us east. You might go to 
Rockford with us and walk up to the college 
where your brothers are to be students. 
Then we could come back to the station 
and eat our luncheon together. Afterward 
1 could put you on board your train be- 
fore taking mine, and you could return to 
Winthrop alone. 

“ Mother ! ” said Helen in an excited 
whisper. “Mayl?” 

Mrs. Miller nodded. “ If you are careful 
until then and keep on growing stronger.” 

“ Give me more medicine right off,” said 
Helen, “and if you fink it will make me any 
weller 1 ’d rather go right back to bed.” 

A minute later she said, “ I just pity the 
children that have to go on a sleigh-ride in- 
stead. Oh, to fink, ! am going to come 
home all alone ! ” 


Helen Is 111 


151 

Grandfather and Grandmother laughed at 
the way in which Helen seemed to prefer 
the trip alone to the trip with them, but 
they remembered the time when they were 
alone and understood it all. 

This is how it happened that, on the 
morning when Grandfather and Grand- 
mother Gray were starting back to Massa- 
chusetts, an eager little girl, with yellow 
hair, jumped up and down on the platform 
beside them, and wished and wished that 
the train would hurry and get in a few 
minutes ahead of time. Ralph and Jack 
were already in school — poor boys ! She 
felt sorry for them, although they had been 
very brave and said it was all right and 
that they were glad she was going. She 
grasped her little purse more tightly than 
ever, as she thought of them, for Mother 
had let her take twenty cents out of her toy 
bank that morning, on purpose to spend for 
them in Rockford. 

Even while she was thinking of this she 
saw the train coming, and hurried toward 


152 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the track. She was so fearful lest they 
should be left. It seemed to take them so 
long to hug each other and say “Good- 
bye.” And Father had to help Grandfather 
with his suit-case, and Mother was fixing 
Grandmother’s veil. O dear ! Helen was 
not going to wait any longer. She crowded 
toward the steps of the car. 

“Better wait for your folks, little girl,” 
said the man with the brass buttons, kindly. 

“But they take so long,” she remarked, 
anxiously. 

“ Don’t you worry,” he said. “ We won’t 
go off without ’em. Do you see them trunks 
on that truck ? Them all has to be put on 
before we go.” 

Helen thought him exceedingly kind, 
although she wished he would not say 
“them trunks.” And now Grandfather and 
Grandmother came and Father and Mother 
kissed her good-bye and wished her a 
pleasant journey — quite as though she were 
grown up and about to travel for days and 
days. 


Helen Is 111 


153 


There was nothing very remarkable about 
the trip to Rockford, only, of course, when 
you are seven years old every railroad jour- 
ney is very exciting. Grandfather let her 
hold her own ticket and give it to the con- 
ductor herself, and there was a fat baby in 
the seat ahead of her, who kept sprawl- 
ing over backward and playing peek-a-boo. 
Besides, there was the interesting water- 
tank at the end of the car, where you 
pushed down on the shiny little handle, in- 
stead of turning a faucet, as at home. 
Grandmother let her take a little travelling- 
cup, one of the sort that shuts down into a 
tiny flat box, and go twice to the tank for a 
drink. She began to talk about being thirsty a 
third time, but Grandmother said that she 
thought two drinks should do for a one-hour 
trip, and that it certainly would not do for 
her to leave the window now, because they 
were almost in sight of Rockford. 

The college buildings looked very big and 
grand to Helen. She could hardly realize 
that Ralph and Jack— and Patsy— would 


154 The Millers and Their Playmates 

ever go there to school. She wondered 
where Professor Sinclair’s room was. He 
was the kind gentleman who had given her 
brothers their watches, and she wished she 
could see him. 

Grandfather left the bags at the station, 
and they walked up to see the college. A 
lot of young men with pleasant faces and 
very small caps stood around the big door- 
way of one of the buildings. 

“Are they all teachers, too ?” whispered 
Helen. 

“No, they are pupils,” replied her grand- 
father. 

“ How can they be when they are so 
big ?” asked Helen. 

“ People are never too old to learn, dearie,” 
was the answer. “ Ralph and Jack will be 
as old as that when they come here.” 

“Oh!” said Helen. 

Then they went down-town and into the 
stores to spend Helen’s money for her 
brothers. It was very hard to decide where 
there were so many delightful things for 


Helen Is 111 


155 


sale — a whole storeful, in fact— and all for 
either five or ten cents. At last she bought 
a pin-tray and a small mug, each with a tiny 
picture of the college printed on it. 

“ 1 am glad that is settled,” she said. 
“Don’t you fink it is very hard work to fink 
when you don’t know what to fink ? ” 
“Always,” said Grandfather gravely. “ I 
have often noticed that myself” 

So they turned toward the station and 
found seats by the window, where Helen 
could look out across the frozen river, and 
then Grandmother opened the lunch-box. 
Aurelia would not tell Helen what was in 
it, and it was almost like opening Christmas 
gifts to unwrap the little parcels which lay 
inside. Before they opened them Grand- 
mother insisted that they should guess 
what each was, and— would you believe it ? 
— Grandfather guessed wrong every single 
time! There were sandwiches and pickles 
and fruit and cake and a queer little jar of 
salad, out of which they helped themselves 
with tin spoons, until Grandfather discovered 


156 The Millers and Their Playmates 

that a sandwich made a very good plate for 
a small portion of salad. 

“ After you have eaten all the salad,” he 
explained, “you can eat the plate. And 
that is a good thing too,” he added, “be- 
cause then there are less dishes to clear 
away and wash. Now think how much 
easier it would be for Aurelia if you would 
always eat your dishes at the end of a 
meal.” 

After luncheon they walked out on the 
long bridge across the river, and then they 
had to hurry back to be there when Helen’s 
train came in. In fact, although they had 
time enough to settle her comfortably in a 
car-seat, with her purse and her ticket and 
the parcel for the boys, there was no time 
at all to cry about parting from Grandfather 
and Grandmother. She kissed them both 
and hugged them, and Grandmother said, 
“ You blessed child ! ” and Grandfather used 
his handkerchief pretty hard and told her 
that she was “a comfort.” Yes, there had 
also been time for him to speak to a couple 


Helen Is 111 


157 


of tall and very dignified men who sat 
across the aisle, and then to tell her that in 
case she needed any help or advice she 
should ask them. 

She had no need to do so, for the con- 
ductor had hardly taken her ticket when 
one of the gentlemen leaned over and asked 
if she would not sit with them. “Come 
over and chat with us,” he said. “1 am 
Colonel Rankin and this is my friend Major 
Brisben. We have been travelling all day 
and have had only each other for company. 
Let me see — I fear that the pleasant gentle- 
man who entered the car with you forgot 
to mention your name. What are we to 
call you ? ” 

“ Why, Helen, of course,” was the reply, 
“ but the rest of it is Miller.” 

“Are you going far, little Miss Helen?” 
asked Major Brisben. 

“Yes,” said Helen with an air of great 
importance. “ 1 am going home to Win- 
throp, and it takes more than an hour— two 
minutes more.” 


158 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“That isquite adistance, ’’said Colonel Ran- 
kin. “ And are you travelling quite alone? ” 

“ Yes indeed 1 ” cried Helen, “lam seven, 
you know. It ’s because I was sick and 
could n’t go to the sleigh-ride.” 

“ Ah ! ” said her new friends together. 

“ Yes,” continued Helen. “ My brothers 
went and 1 was sick in bed with a cough. 
And 1 cried because 1 could n’t go. So 
Grandfather said that 1 could come a piece 
with him and Grandmother when they 
went back to Massachusetts. 1 went as far 
as Rockford. And we ate our dinner in the 
station. . . . May 1 look at that book?” 
she asked suddenly. 

“Certainly,” said Major Brisben, beside 
whom the magazine lay. “ Here are some 
others. 1 wonder what sort of pictures you 
like best ? ” 

“Well,” was the quite unexpected reply, 
“ 1 like that picture of Dawn by Reni the 
best of any I know.” 

“Picture of what?" said the astonished 
Colonel. 


Helen Is 111 


159 


“ By whom ? ” said the Major. 

“ Why, Dawn, by Guido Reni,” answered 
Helen in the most matter-of-fact way. 
“There is a copy of it in Mr. Peters’s Art 
Gallery. Have n’t you ever seen a picture 
of it?” she asked in genuine surprise, for 
the little Millers had passed many happy 
Saturday mornings in the great rooms full 
of paintings which the wealthy Mr. Peters, 
of Winthrop, owned and kept open for 
other people to enjoy. 

“Yes,” replied the gentlemen, “we have 
seen it.” And Colonel Rankin added, “I 
wonder why you like it so ? ” 

“Oh,” she answered, “1 don’t know all 
the why 1 like it. Mother says you hardly 
ever do. But the horses look strong and 
glad to go, and all the people in the picture 
look so well and happy. And then 1 like to 
think of all the folks down there in that vil- 
lage, who are just waking up and being 
glad to see the sun shining through the 
clouds, ’cause you know that ’s what it all 
really means. The boys like it too.” 


i6o The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Does your mother like it ?” asked 
Colonel Rankin, who had noticed Helen’s 
telling what her mother had said. 

“Yes” answered Helen, “she has a big 
photograph of it up in the library. She says 
it rests her to look at it. She gets pretty 
tired sometimes, you know, when she is 
writing a book.” 

“ Ah,” said Major Brisben, “ so she writes 
books, does she ? What sort of books ? ” 

“Stories for children,” said Helen. “1 
help her, and so do the boys.” 

“In what particular way?” said Major 
Brisben, pulling his moustache. 

“ By being good and not interrupting,” re- 
plied Helen. “ She says we are ihe greatest 
helps.” 

The Colonel laughed a little and stooped 
to pick up a fallen paper. “Tell me more 
about your brothers,” he said. 

“ Ralph is twelve and jack is nine,” she 
said. “ They ’re going to college in Rock- 
ford, soon ’s they ’re old enough, and then 
Ralph is going to build engines, or something 


Helen Is 111 i6i 

like that, and Jack finks he may decide to 
write books. He says maybe he will write 
one this winter. . . . Mr. Peters has 
just got some new statues,” she added, anx- 
ious that her new friends should understand 
how fine the Art Gallery really was. 

“Is that so?” said the Major. “Any 
more new paintings, too ? ” 

“About fifty,” replied Helen," and what 
do you fink ? He has another Bonheur ! ” 

“ What is there remarkable about that ? ” 
asked the Major. 

“Why, they cost so much,” said Helen, 
“and we always like them so. Jack says her 
animals look so live that he dars n’t go past 
them alone when he was a little boy, for 
fear they would bite him or somefing.” 

“Tell us about the new statues,” urged 
the Colonel. 

“There are five,” said Helen,” Plato, Soc- 
rates, Goddess of Liberty, a nymph drink- 
ing dew out of a morning-glory, and 
Diana.” 

“ Hum, who were they all ? ” asked the 


1 62 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Colonel. “ 1 know about the Goddess of 
Liberty, but what about the rest ? ” 

“ 1 fink the nymph is too fat,” remarked 
Helen honestly. “ Plato and Socrates were 
very wise men who lived hundreds and 
hundreds of years ago.” 

“ And Diana ? Who was he ? ” said the 
Colonel. 

“He?” said Helen, looking much dis- 
gusted. “ Diana was n’t a man ! ” 

“ Oh, a lady then ? ” asked the Colonel. 

“No,” said the small maiden. “Don't 
you know that she was the goddess of the 
chase ? ” 

The train drew near Winthrop, where Mr. 
Miller was to be at the station. Major Bris- 
ben helped Helen into the cloak which she 
had removed. Colonel Rankin took a card 
from his card-case and asked Major Brisben 
for one of his. These he gave to Helen and 
said, “ Convey our compliments to Mrs. Mil- 
ler and tell her that we consider her a most 
excellent educator.” 

“At Winthrop he went with Helen from 


Helen Is 111 


163 

the car, saw her safely to Mr. Miller, and, 
as the train moved out, stood out on the 
platform lifting his cap to Helen, while at the 
window Major Brisben did the same. 

“Oh, Father,” said Helen, “1 have had 
the loveliest time 1 ” 


CHAPTER X. 


CATCHING ON BOBS AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 

W INTHROP was so small a place that on 
almost any sunshiny winter day, and 
especially on a Saturday, Main Street was 
lined with farmers’ bob-sleighs, and on the 
roads leading to and from the railroad station 
such sleighs were constantly passing, either 
carrying grain, potatoes, and wool to ship 
away, or returning empty after having 
left their loads. The streets were never 
crowded, and, as the farmers were usually 
good-natured, the children had many a 
happy time catching onto bob-sleighs. 

To be sure there was an accident once in 
a while, but that was always because the 
child was careless. When Maggie Flynn 
broke her leg two years before this, it was 
really her own fault, for she caught onto the 


Catching on Bobs 165 

front of one side, and then, when the sleigh 
struck a rough place in the road, she was 
thrown under the back runners. The only 
safe place to catch on, you know, is at the 
very back end. Maggie had never “ hopped 
a bob,” as they called it, since, although she 
had quite recovered from the accident. All 
the boys of nine or over did, however, and 
some of the girls, the only rule being that 
they were to keep off Main Street. 

One fine Saturday morning the Miller boys 
hurried through their tasks in the house, 
and came to where their mother sat patch- 
ing a pair of trousers. “We have a favor 
to ask,” said Ralph boldly. “ We won’t be 
cross if you say ‘No,’ only please think 
awhile and see if you can’t say ‘Yes’ in- 
stead. We want to know if you won’t be 
willing, just this once, to let us ride out into 
the country as much as two miles. 1 will 
wear my watch, and we will surely, surely 
be home in time for dinner.” 

“If we’re not,” added jack, “we’ll go 
without even a crumb.” 


1 66 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Mrs. Miller basted half way around the 
patch. 

“ And you know we always catch onto 
the hind ends,” said Ralph. 

“And we always say, ‘Give us leave?’ 
to the driver first,” added Jack. 

Mrs. Miller finished her basting. 

“ And if we should get cold, we promise 
we will go to some farmhouse and get 
warm,” said Ralph. 

“And we’ll be very polite about it,” 
added jack. 

Mrs. Miller threaded another needle and 
took up her sewing again. “ Yes,” said she. 

“You are positively the best mother in 
the whole wide world,” said Ralph. 

“ And there never has been and never, 
never could be another one so sweet,” said 
jack, with a bear-like hug. 

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Miller, “1 
must be even more charming than I 
thought 1 was ! ” And they all laughed to- 
gether, while the boys tugged away at their 
overcoats. 


Catching on Bobs 


167 


“ Hurry up, Ralph,” shouted Jack. 
“There comes one this minute!” And 
they were off as fast as their feet could 
carry them. 

That was a morning of great happiness. 
It was the first time that either of them had 
been allowed to ride beyond the city limits 
on a bob, and it was one of those rare morn- 
ings when all of the trees were covered with 
long crystals of frost. Of course it was 
cold, but the sun shone brightly. Little by 
little the frost melted from the trees. Un- 
til it did, the boys thought it looked like 
fairyland. 

In and out of town they rode, going a 
little farther out on each trip, until, by 
the time jack found his toes aching with 
cold, they were just two miles from home. 
“It’s no use,” jack said. “1 have to get 
warm. Do you mind stopping, Ralph ?” 

“No,” replied Ralph. “ 1 was just think- 
ing of it myself. Let ’s go in here.” 

“ It does n’t look like a very good house,” 
objected jack. 


f 


i68 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ The people may be just as good, though,” 
said Ralph. “You can’t tell all about the 
people by the size of the house. Come on 1 
1 see some children at the window.” 

They knocked at the front door, and it 
was opened by a tired-looking woman, with 
a baby on her arm and two little girls 
clinging to her skirts. 

“ May we come in to get warm, please ? ” 
said Ralph. “We won’t make you any 
trouble.” 

“ Certainly,” said the woman, and her 
voice was very sweet. “Mamie, Jessie, 
get some seats for these boys. ” 

The boys stepped inside, removing their 
caps. The little girls pushed forward a broken 
chair and an empty box. The woman opened 
the stove-door and threw in another piece 
of wood. It was part of the root of a pine 
stump. When she fed the fire, the woman 
had laid the baby in its cradle, jack saw 
that the cradle was made from a soap-box, 
with rockers roughly cut from pieces of 
wood. He looked again at Mamie and 


Catching on Bobs 


169 


Jessie, and noticed that they were bare- 
footed. Their mother had on an old pair 
of men’s shoes. She stepped into another 
room for something, and Ralph nudged jack 
in the ribs. “ Don’t stare,” he whispered. 

“ 1 wasn’t,” said Jack out loud. “You’d 
better watch yourself I ” But he had no 
sooner spoken than he knew that he had 
been staring, and decided to make up for 
it by being especially polite, so he began 
talking to the little girls, asking them their 
ages. 

“I’m seven,” answered Mamie. “That 
is, 1 will be on my next birthday.” 

“Yes,” said Jessie, “and she had a birth- 
day yesterday. She was six then. 1 ’m 
’most five, and 1 ’m big enough to help my 
mamma lots.” 

“What do you do ?” asked Ralph. “Do 
you bring in the wood ? ” 

“We used to, when we had shoes to 
wear,” said Jessie. “Now we wipe dishes 
and tend baby.” 

“You see,” Mamie explained, “Mamma 


170 The Millers and Their Playmates 

has to do it all now, ’cause she has some 
old shoes of our papa’s to wear. We can’t 
play out of doors now, but pretty soon it 
will be spring, and then we can.” 

“And p’r’aps,” Jessie added, “our papa 
will be well again pretty soon, too, and 
send us some money so we can have shoes 
this winter.” 

Just here their mother came back. “ My 
little girls have never gone barefooted in 
cold weather until now,” she said. “Their 
father went north to work in the lumber- 
camps, and has been ill, so that he could 
not send us money as usual. It has been 
hard, but the children are brave, and he is 
growing stronger now. We shall manage 
to get along somehow.” 

The boys did not know exactly what to 
say, for they had been taught to be very 
careful about telling how much more they 
had than others, and feared seeming to put 
on airs. 

“ I had a nice birthday,” said Mamie. 
“We had syrup on our mush for supper. 


Catching on Bobs 1 7 1 

and I had my mamma’s old doll to play 
with all day — the one she had when she 
was a little girl.” 

Ralph looked at Jack and jack at Ralph. 
Both were thinking of their happy birthdays 
at home, with cakes and candies and birth- 
day wishes. Jack wriggled around on his 
box and was very unhappy. Ralph had a 
good idea. He whispered to Jessie first and 
found out her last name, then he said: 
“Mrs. Smith, 1 wish you ’d let Jack and 
me bring you in a lot of wood before we go. 
We ’re all warm now, and would like to, 
would n’t we. Jack ? ” 

“Yes,” said Jack, rising. “Water, too, 
if you want some.” 

Mrs. Smith looked much pleased. “Thank 
you,” she said. “You are good boys. 1 
knew it when 1 first saw you. It will help 
me a great deal if you will fill my water-pail 
at the well, and bring a few armfuls of wood 
into the shed. There is plenty of it outside, 
but the shed is empty. If it is there, 1 
can easily bring it in here when the box is 


172 The Millers and Their Playmates 


empty. Mr. Smith cut up a big pile of roots 
for us before he went north.” 

The boys took the pail and went out. 
“ Ralph,” said Jack, as soon as they were 
away from the house, “how do you feel 
inside of you ? ” 

“ 1 don’t know,” replied Ralph. “ Why ?” 

“Well,” answered jack, “1 feel sort 
of as though 1 ’d bust or something if 1 
could n’t get some shoes for Jessie and 
Mamie.” 

“Oh,” said Ralph gravely,” 1 feel sort of 
sick when 1 see them barefooted. Would 
you dare ask Mrs. Smith to let us bring out 
some of Helen’s old clothing, if Mother ’ll 
let us ? ” 

“Yes,” replied Jack fiercely, “1 would! 
1 just believe she ’d be glad to have old 
things, and she does n’t talk like the kind 
that would be mad or think you were stuck 
up.” 

“ All right,” said Jack, “ 1 ’ll do it.” 

So, when a good pile of wood was stored 
in one corner of the shed, they filled the 


Catching on Bobs 


173 


pail and went into the house again. Ralph 
dreaded it, but he cleared his throat and 
said: “ Mrs. Smith, we have a little sister at 
home who grows very fast, and sometimes 
our mother has good clothing of hers to 
give away. If she has any now, may we 
bring it out to the little girls ? ” 

“And perhaps there ’d be shoes, too,” 
added Jack. 

The tears shone in Mrs. Smith’s eyes as 
she sat down and drew her children to her. 
“I should be very thankful,” she said, 
“ only please be careful to explain to your 
mother that I did not ask for the things. I 
have never asked for help yet, but 1 will 
not refuse it when it is so kindly offered.” 

“We ’ll tell her just how it was,” prom- 
ised the boys joyfully, and they called 
out their good-byes and hurried home. 

Such a scene as there was when they got 
there ! Both spoke at once, and Mrs. Miller 
and Helen could not understand what had 
happened until the mother made them take 
one-minute turns in talking. Then they 


174 The Millers and Their Playmates 

understood. “1 have somethings,” Mrs. 
Miller said, “and surely there are more to 
be had in the neighborhood. You boys 
get clean for dinner and 1 will do some 
telephoning.” 

She found out a little more about the 
family from Mr. Miller, and then talked 
with all of her neighbors who had little 
girls. Every one of them promised to get a 
package ready as soon as dinner was eaten. 
At the table the whole family talked of the 
Smiths. Helen decided to hunt through her 
toys and find something to send. Mrs. Mil- 
ler was sure that they could collect enough 
clothing to make the children comfortable, 
and said she would add a little for the 
mother. Jack begged to have six birthday 
candles put in for Mamie, because she had 
had none when she should have had them. 
Ralph began to fear that they could not 
carry out so large an amount of stuff. 

“Let Billy carry it for you,” suggested 
Mr. Miller. “ If Billy is to be a member 
of this family, it is high time he began 


Catching on Bobs 175 

to have a share in helping unfortunate 
people.” 

“ Good scheme ! ” said Ralph. 

“ Dandy ! ” said Jack. 

After dinner Mr. Miller looked at his watch, 
and then hurried around to fix Billy for his 
new task. He took a couple of grain-sacks, 
and fastened them to the saddle and to each 
other with very stout twine, one sack hang- 
ing on either side of Billy’s furry gray body. 
“Now,” he said, “you can drive Billy 
around from door to door and let people 
drop in their bundles. When you have col- 
lected them all, you might let Helen ride 
astride between the bags to see that nothing 
falls out.” 

That was exactly how they did it, and 
such a load as they got ! Janice Field’s out- 
grown aprons and underwear; Sallie James’s 
red flannel dress that was too tight for her; 
Bertha Clarke’s blue woolen gown and 
flannel petticoats; an old cloak of Rosa 
Jacobs’s and another belonging to her 
mother, which could be made over; a warm 


176 The Millers and Their Playmates 

shawl that had once belonged to Rosa’s 
grandmother; and five, actually five, pairs 
of children’s shoes; besides more than a 
dozen pairs of warm stockings to be cut 
over for small feet. 

Good Mrs. Flynn heard of the plan from 
Maggie, who was on the street when Billie 
made his first call. “The poor childer!” 
she said, wiping the steam from her fore- 
head with the back of one soapy hand, as 
she straightened up from the wash-tub. 
“ Sure, it ’s no clothing at all we have to 
shpare, but we ’ve been too poor ourselves 
not to do something for them that is. Here, 
Maggie, darlint !” Take a couple 0’ bars 0’ 
soap out to drop into Billy’s bags. Sure, 
soap is always handy, whether ye ’re rich or 
poor, and more whin you ’ve got childer to 
look afther.” 

Maggie told Jimmie Flannigan while on her 
way back with the soap. Jimmie was coast- 
ing on the sidewalk, and told Patsy as soon 
as he reached the bottom. Patsy brought 
his sled around with a Jerk. “ Let ’s see 


Catching on Bobs 


177 


what we can get,” he said. Ten minutes 
later the Flannigan boys were hurrying after 
Billy, and waving an old dress-skirt of their 
mother’s as they ran. 

Mrs. Flannigan laughed as she looked 
after them. “ 1 meant to wear it some more 
meself,” she said, “ but there ! With James 
well and working steady, and the baby so 
good, 1 ought to be willing to give some- 
thing.” Then she looked at her fat and 
rosy baby, asleep in its pretty cradle, and 
went back to her dish-washing. 

“Say, fellows,” said Patsy, as he caught 
up with Billy and the little Millers, “Why 
can’t Jimmie and me — 1 mean Jimmie and 1— 
go along ? ” 

“ If you go, 1 will,” said Maggie. 

Ralph hesitated. “What’ll 1 tell Mrs. 
Smith if you do ? ” he asked. 

“Aw, tell her it’s just a couple of 
your friends out for some exercise,” said 
Patsy. 

“ Exercise in some of her wood, then, 
will you ? ” demanded Ralph. 


13 


178 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“I’ll bring in as much as you will,” agreed 
Patsy. 

“So ’ll 1,” said Jimmie. 

“I’ll help,” said Maggie, “and let’s get 
Lucinda.” 

The others waited while she ran back for 
her friend, and Lucinda was soon hurrying 
out with a pair of warm mittens, which 
Grandma Hathaway had been knitting for 
herself but insisted upon sending to Mrs. 
Smith. 

“ Now we ’re ready,” said Ralph. “ Get 
up, Billy ! ” 

Helen rode all the way out with Mrs. 
Flannigan’s skirt spread over her knees 
and the full bags wobbling around on 
either side of her. The other children 
walked near her or rode on bobs, and they 
had a merry time. It was not the first time 
these children had helped the poor since that 
day two years before, when the young min- 
ister had led them down to Mrs. Hatha- 
way’s little garden. They liked it and were 
learning good ways of helping. 


m 


Catching on Bobs 

At the gate of the Smith place Helen and 
Billy waited for the rest. Helen could see 
Mamie and Jessie pressing their noses against 
the window, and thought of the little bare 
feet that she could not see. It was settled 
that Billy should be driven to the back door, 
and Ralph and jack should knock and carry 
in the bags. The rest were to stay outside 
unless invited in. 

Mrs. Smith opened the door quickly. 
“ We brought out some shoes and things,” 
said Ralph. “ Where shall we put them ? ” 

“ Bless your kind little hearts ! Bring them 
right in,” replied Mrs. Smith. “ And is this 
your sister? Have her come in and get 
warm.” 

Helen scrambled down and Ralph un- 
fastened the bags. “The other children 
came along for exercise,” explained jack. 
“They thought they’d enjoy bringing in 
some wood for you, but they ’re not ex- 
pecting to come into the house.” 

“Oh, have them come in,” said Mrs. 
Smith. “They look like nice children.” 


i8o The Millers and Their Playmates 

“They are,” said Jack quickly. “They are 
just as nice as we are.” 

So Patsy and Maggie and Jimmie and Lu- 
cinda came in also and tried hard not to stare 
as Mrs. Smith laughed and cried over the 
things which poured out from the two bags 
where Ralph and Jack emptied them upon 
the floor. The little girls pounced upon 
some shoes at once, and put them on with- 
out waiting for stockings, or to see whether 
they fitted. 

It was very soon certain that the whole 
family could be made comfortable for the rest 
of the winter with what was there, and then 
the children from town went out to carry in 
pine roots. If you have ever carried any 
such firewood — and probably you have not 
— you know that you cannot pile it into neat 
armfuls, because the pieces are so crooked 
and queerly shaped. So each load had to 
be a light one, and Helen, with one piece in 
either hand, carried about as much as Patsy, 
who could manage only two or three pieces 
at a time. 


Catching on Bobs 1 8 1 

Seven children going back and forth, like 
ants around an ant-hill, accomplished a great 
deal in a short time, and it was only about 
four o’clock when Mrs. Smith called them 
to come in and rest. The little girls had on 
shoes and stockings at last, and Mamie wore 
Sallie James’s outgrown red flannel, while 
Jessie had on Bertha Clarke’s blue gown. 
They had been freshly washed and combed, 
and looked pretty and happy. 

Mrs. Smith gave the little girls a basket of 
apples, and told them to pass it to the others. 
“ Take all you want,” said she. “These 
grew on our own trees, and we have plenty 
of them.” 

They did. In fact there were only three 
left in the basket when they finished, and so 
many cores had been thrown into the stove 
that the room began to have the faint, sweet 
smell of burning apple. 

“The apples were very nice,” said Ralph, 
politely,” and 1 don’t know when 1 have en- 
joyed an afternoon so much.” 

“1 hope your husband will be well soon, 


1 82 The Millers and Their Playmates 

ma’am,” remarked Maggie, as they left. 
“Sure, it must be hard for you at home 
worrying about him.” 

“ He is gaining,” said Mrs. Smith, “ and 
it will do him good to know the luck that 
has come to his home this day. Good-bye, 
and bless every one of you. Tell your 
mothers 1 say so, and may they be blessed, 
too.” 

The children had to walk all the way 
home, save as they took turns in riding 
Billy, for it grew late, and no farmers were 
going toward town. They were very tired 
when they reached home. “But 1 don’t 
care, it paid ! ” said Ralph. 

And somebody, several people, in fact, 
said — they should not have said anything 
so slangy, but they did say it — “ You bet! ” 


CHAPTER XI. 

JACK WRITES A STORY. 

COON after Billy carried the load of warm 
clothing to the Smiths, Jack lamed one 
ankle while skating. It was not a serious 
injury, but enough to keep him out of 
school and on the couch for two days. 
That was not so bad, all in all, for with his 
ankle bandaged and kept up he was fairly 
comfortable. The worst part of it, for him, 
was the fact that Mrs. Miller had to be so 
busy with writing a new book. It had al- 
ways been her custom to begin her book as 
soon as the Christmas excitement was well 
over and the children settled down in 
school, but this year it had to be put off on 
account of the visit from her parents, and 
now her publisher was in a hurry for the 
story to be done. 


183 


184 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“It is too bad, dear,” she said, “but I 
have to be busy at my desk until school is 
out in the afternoon. I will put your books 
and playthings, and whatever you want, 
on the table beside your couch, and then, 
when you have to be waited on, Aurelia 
will come at your call. After my day’s 
writing is done I will sit by you and sew.” 

“I wonder what I’ll do,” said Jack. “I 
tell you what,” he added, “ I ’ll write a story 
myself, and draw the pictures to it. Not a 
big enough story for a whole book, but just 
a story.” 

“ I have a blank book in which you 
might write it,” suggested Mrs. Miller. 
“Sometimes they make a little book out of 
a short story. Then you could keep it on 
your book-shelves and it would grow more 
precious to you every year.” 

“ 1 will do that,” agreed Jack, “and then 
when I have a little boy he ’ll like to read 
the book his father wrote. That is, the 
first book his father wrote. 1 think that 
prob’ly when I grow up 1 ’ll write them 


Jack Writes a Story 185 

pretty often. When 1 am not busy with 
other things, you know, just write a book 
or two.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Miller, bending over 
and kissing the top of his head, “ if you do 
write books, 1 hope that your little boy will 
be as good about not interrupting as my 
boys have always been.” 

“You just get me the things,” said jack, 
“and 1 promise 1 won’t ask you a single 
question this morning. Do you s’pose 
Aurelia could help me a little on spelling 
sometimes ?” 

“ 1 would not ask her,” advised Mrs. 
Miller. “You know she never had much 
chance to go to school when she was a girl. 
Do as well as you can with the spelling 
alone.” 

So, when Ralph and Helen started off for 
school, the two authors began their work. 
To Mrs. Miller it was all very familiar. In 
two minutes after she had closed the library 
doors behind her she was scribbling away 
as fast as her pen could fly. It was not so 


1 86 The Millers and Their Playmates 

with Jack. For a long time he lay there and 
puzzled over a name. He wanted some- 
thing that would look well on the outside 
of the book. He knew that some books 
had short names, and he printed “Robert” 
in big letters on a sheet of paper, to see 
how that would do. Then he thought that 
it did not tell enough of the story inside, so 
he took another sheet and tried, “ How 
Robert Russell Saved a Man from Being 
Drownded in a River.” 

That was so long that the printing had to 
be very fine. He tried again, and that time 
was quite satisfied. He put it on the out- 
side of the little sheepskin-covered blank- 
book at once, and held it at arm’s length to 
see how it looked. “Almost Drownded,” 
was the title. 

“Now to begin the story,” said Jack. 
“ I’ve heard Mother say that some folks 
begin a story sort of in the middle and tell 
something exciting before they tell who it 
is about, but she says she doesn’t like 
that way. I guess I ’ll tell them about 


Jack Writes a Story 187 

Robert first, and then what he did after- 
ward.” 

So the story was begun. The little author 
had frequent rests, in which he looked at 
pictures or played with the cat, yet, chap- 
ter by chapter, the story grew, and at the 
end of his second day on the couch he 
displayed it to his family. This is how it 
read : 


ALMOST DROWNDED. 

CHAPTER I. — ROBERT. 

The hero of this book’s name was Robert 
Russell. He was nine years old, and had 
black eyes and curly hair. It was black to. 
His peepel were very poor. They lived be- 
side a river. Often they had no food except 
the fish that Robert caught and the wild 
beries that his sister picked. His sister’s 
name was Mary. His mother was very 
sick. And his father drank whisky and was 
often intocksickated. Then he would beet 
Robert. 


1 88 The Millers and Their Playmates 
CHAPTER 2 . — SHE DIES. 

One night Robert’s mother was very sick 
and it was stormy. He went for the docter 
and told Mary to give her some sage tea. 
His father was drunk some more. The doc- 
ter came. His mother laid cold and still. 
Mass said the docter she will never be alive 
again on this erth she is dead. Robert’s 
sister berst out crying. But Robert com- 
forted her. 

CHAPTER 3.— HE WAS DRUNK. 

Robert’s father was intocksited now and 
swore something dredful. He said Robert 
must go and get him some more whisky but 
Robert said never so he beet him and then 
went to get his own whisky. His way lay 
across the raleroad tract, and a train came 
along just then and ran over him and killed 
him so he was dead to. 

CHAPTER 4. — A LOAN IN THE WORLD. 

Robert was now an orfun and had his 
little sister to take care of, Every morning 


Jack Writes a Story 


189 


he would split the wood and help her get 
breakfast and catch some fish. The growsir 
gave them crackers and things and said you 
are a good boy Robert. Robert said thank 
you sir and 1 will do urrands for you. They 
had hens and laid eggs too. 

CHAPTER 5. — A LUCKY FIND. 

One day when Robert was digging bate 
to go fishing his shuvel struck something 
hard. Aha said Robert 1 must have hit a 
tin can. It was a toemaytoe can full of 
money. Robert took it to the growsir and 
said 1 will take this back to the oner. The 
growsir said the oner must be dead. Robert 
said 1 will ask the minnister. So he asked 
him and he said it must have been berried 
by robbers long ago perhaps Captin Kid it 
will be all right for you to keep it my little 
man. So he did. 

CHAPTER 6. — SPENDING THE MONEY. 

Robert put $2.00 into the contribushun 
plate next Sunday and then got him a new 


tgo The Millers and Their Playmates 

sute with long trowsirs and a vest. He got 
Mary a blue dress with red bows on it. 
Then he said we will buy a popcorn stand 
and ern lots of money but Mary said how 
about school and he said we will mannage 
somehow. But when he went to bed that 
night in his poor bed on the floor he said 
0 how aloan 1 am 1 am very much aloan. 

CHAPTER 7. — ROBERT HEARS SOMETHING. 

The next day Robert was fishing by his 
house and heard a splash a ways off. He 
lissened and he heard a man’s voyse say 
help help 1 am drowning. 

CHAPTER 8.— ROBERT RESKEWS HIM. 

Robert took off his coat and he was 
bearfoot anyhow. He stood his pole up 
by the shed and took care of his bate then 
he plunged into the icy water. A man was 
in the river on the other side. He swam 
across the current which was swift and 
pulled him out by his hair. He was uncon- 


191 


Jack Writes a Story 

chus. So he called Mary to help ressussi- 
taight him and they did. Then Mary gave 
him some coughy that they had left from 
brekfast. 


CHAPTER 9.— GRATITOOD 

When he had drank the coughey he said 
you have saved my life. 1 am the ritch Mr. 
George Herbert Montague what can 1 do for 
you? Robert modestly said o that is all 
right. Mr. Montague said no my nobbel 
boy 1 will show my gratitood where is your 
father ? Dead sir said Robert. And your 
mother said Mr. Montague Dead to said 
Robert with a sob. Mass my poor child 
said he. 

CHAPTER 10. —ROBERT IS ADDOPTED. 

I will addopt you said Mr. Montague and 
you shall live in my house and be ritch. O 
sir said Robert 1 cannot leave my little sister. 
What said Mr. Montague is this sweet child 
your sister ? Then he said 1 need a little 


192 The Millers and Their Playmates 

girl very much and I will take her to. 
Thank you sir said Robert. 

CHAPTER I I.— THE JURNY. 

Mr. Montague said hurry up to catch the 
train so they put on their best clothes and 
gave the house to the kind growsir. Robert 
shed a tear on leaving the river but Mr. 
Montague said don’t the fish near my house 
beets these and you shall have a jointed 
pole. Then he got some crackerjack of the 
newsboy and they reached their new home. 
It was grand. 

CHAPTER 12.— RITCHES. 

The house was made of brick and had a 
fowntin in front with an iron negro boy by 
the drive to hold horses. Roberts room was 
all pink and had a punching bag in it besides. 
Mary’s was blue and she had dolls gaylower. 
At dinner they had pink ice cream and rost 
turkey two helpings. They went to ride in 
an aughto afterward and Robert steared it. 


i9i 


Jack Writes a Story 
CHAPTER 13. — ^THE END. 

Robert is now a man of 40 and very ritch. 
His bennyfackter is dead but Robert lives 
there. He is married but very happy. So 
is Mary. Sometimes they talk of the time 
when they were poor and Robert says it 
seems like a dream that is all. 

***** 

It was almost time for the children to 
return from school, on the second day of 
Jack’s confinement, when he finished the 
thirteenth chapter with a sigh of relief. 

“ Done ? ” asked Mrs. Miller, as she came 
in from the library and stood by the couch, 
“lam done, too, for to-day, but 1 shall have 
to begin again to-morrow, while you will be 
trotting off to school.” 

“ Don’t, Mother,” begged jack earnestly. 
“It’s too hard work. 1 wouldn’t, if 1 
were you. 1 did n’t know how hard it 
was, till 1 wrote a book myself. Father 
can earn money enough down-town for 


13 


194 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the family, can’t he ? And then you can 
play more.” 

Mrs. Miller laughed at him and pinched 
his cheeks, and declared that she would not 
know how to live without her work, and that 
she really enjoyed it, even if she did some- 
times become tired. “ It is not only for the 
money,” she explained, “ but because 1 think 
it a shame for people to be idle just because 
they do not have to work. There is so 
much good 1 can do, too, with a little extra 
money. No, on the whole 1 like my work 
and 1 do not want to give it up. All 1 ask is 
a chance to play for a while when 1 am 
tired.” 

“ Play now,” urged Jack. “1 ’ll play with 
you. Or may be,” he added slowly, “you’d 
rather play out of doors.” 

“ I am going to push the couch over here 
by the window,” said Mrs. Miller, “and 
then 1 shall swing my Indian clubs on the 
porch, where you can see me. Next 1 shall 
have a game of checkers with you, and then, 
as soon as the other children are here to keep 


195 


Jack Writes a Story 

you company, I am going for a long walk.” 

Twenty minutes later she was hurrying 
down the street, while Ralph, Helen, Lu- 
cinda, Maggie, and the Flannigans were 
sitting in a group by the fireplace and lis- 
tening to Jack’s story, as he read it aloud 
to them. They thought it very remarkable. 

“1 couldn’t have done any better my- 
self,” admitted Ralph, “ unless maybe about 
some of the spelling.” 

“That’s just because 1 wouldn’t inter- 
rupt Mother,” explained jack. “ 1 can spell 
all right every time, if somebody ’ll only tell 
me how.” 

“1 wish you ’d write a book for me some- 
time,” said Helen, admiringly. 

“ 1 will,” promised jack. “ 1 ’ll write you 
a better one than this, only 1 ’d rather wait 
till 1 ’m a little more grown-up, so it won’t 
make me so tired. 1 declare,” he added, 
“ when 1 was a little fellow, 1 never had an 
idea what hard work it is to write books. 
But 1 like it, though.” 

“ 1 tell you what,” said Lucinda — “ 1 ’ve 


196 The Millers and Their Playmates 

thought of it before, but now I am sure we 
can do it— let ’s get up a play, all of our 
very own, and have it in the barn when 
warm weather comes. Then we can make 
folks pay to come to see us act, and it ’ll be 
more fun ! When we did Unde Tom's 
Cabin one of us would have to be too 
many folks, and it sort of mixed us up, but 
we could have this different.” 

“ Do you mean to write it all out on pa- 
per first ? ” asked Jack doubtfully. “ That 
would be lots of work.” 

“Sure, no,” said Maggie, “just sort of 
plan it out like and write that much down, 
the way they do on show-bills, and tell the 
big things that are going to happen. Then 
we can sort of talk it over about the things 
we are going to say on the stage.” 

“ 1 could do that,” agreed jack. “ 1 could 
write a play easier ’n anything that way. 

1 ’d call it ‘The Robbers,’ and make it just 
fierce.” 

“ I wonder if 1 could fix up some scenery 
for it ? ” said Lucinda. “ 1 ’d like to try. If 


Jack Writes a Story 197 

Aurelia would let us have some bluing, 1 
could make an elegant water scene.” 

“I’ll help,” said Ralph, “and there’s 
some old green paint down cellar. 1 believe 
Father’ll let us have it for trees.” 

“ 1 know how to make a dandy dark lan- 
tern out of a tomato can,” said Patsy. “ If 
you ’re going to have robbers you must 
have a dark lantern.” 

“ Let me be a rich lady in the play,” said 
Maggie. “ Me mother has an old table-cover 
I just know she ’ll let me take for a train. 
Let ’s surely do it as soon as the weather 
is warm enough.” 

“ Yes sir,” said all the rest. “ Let ’s 1 ” 


CHAPTER XII. 


EASTER EGGS. 

M ISS MARGARET B. FLYNN requests 
the pleasure of your company on 
Saturday afternoon, at three o’clock, in her 
home.” 

Such were the notes that Maggie handed 
to half a dozen of her most intimate friends, 
late in March that year. “You’d better 
open it,” she usually remarked as she deliv- 
ered a note. “ It ’s an invitation to my 
party. I ’ve been getting ready for it this 
long time, and me mother says you ’re not 
to come dressed up, and you ’d better bring 
along an old apron anyhow.” 

“Why?” asked Ralph the minute she 
finished telling him this. 

“That ’s a secret,” said Maggie, running 


Easter Eggs 199 

away. I ’m not going to tell. You ’ll find 
out when you come.” 

“1 believe 1 will find out,” said Ralph, 
under his breath, for Ralph was very in- 
quisitive. “ 1 believe it ’s a taffy-pull.” 

He teased and coaxed and coaxed and 
teased, and once even threatened not to 
come unless he were told, but not a hint 
would Maggie give as to why they were to 
bring old aprons. 

“ Not much 1 ” Maggie would say, with a 
toss of her head. “ You ’re the fellow that 
said there wasn’t a girl living who could 
keep a secret. So you may just tease and 
tease and tease and tease, Ralph Miller, but 
no more will you get out of Maggie Flynn ! ” 
And she was as good as her word. 

Ralph called it foolish, and fussed about 
it a good deal, but he had a higher opin- 
ion of Maggie, nevertheless. The children 
discussed it at the dinner-table on the im- 
portant Saturday, and Mrs. Miller’s eyes 
twinkled. “You know,” exclaimed Ralph. 
“Tell me!” 


200 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“I have a very strong suspicion as to 
what it is,” she admitted, “ but, dear me ! 
I would n’t think of telling, for fear you 
might say I could n’t keep a secret 1 ” 

Then Ralph gave up. He pouted a little, 
and thought it was pretty tough when a 
fellow’s own mother went back on him, but 
he comforted himself by getting ready ahead 
of the others and being the first guest to 
knock at the Flynns’ front door. There was 
a sound of scrambling inside, and he heard 
Maggie say, “ My dress is all buttoned,” be- 
fore she opened the door to welcome him. 

The little parlor, with its red and green 
carpet, was spotlessly clean, and Mrs. 
Flynn sat in the big chair and visited with 
her daughter’s guests as they came. She 
wore her black serge dress, with a white 
apron and the large brooch which Maggie’s 
father had given her when they were 
married. 

“ Sure it’s a foine day for Maggie’s bit av 
a party,” she said, “an’ ’tis a foine Ayster 
we ’ll be havin’, 1 ’m thinkin’.” 


Easter Eggs 


201 


Maggie made some little sign to her 
mother, who nodded back, and then van- 
ished into the kitchen. When she returned 
she was carrying a big basket of eggs. Patsy 
sprang to his feet. “ Let me carry those ! ” 

he exclaimed. “ They ’re too heavy for 

whew 1 Jiminy 1 What makes ’em so light? ” 

“They’re empty,” said Maggie, laugh- 
ing at the look on his face. 

“ Empty?” said Helen. “ How can they 
be empty? Did n’t the hens put any inside 
to them?’ 

“Bet you they’re blown,” cried Jimmie. 
“ Yes sir, that ’s what they are ! ” 

“ It must have taken a long time to blow 
all of those,” said Lucinda. “Grandma 
used to let me blow some once in a while, 
and it was slow work.” 

“ Oh, 1 know now ! ” cried Ralph. “ We ’re 
going to dye eggs ! ” 

“Maggie kept the saycret, didn’t she?” 
said Mrs. Flynn. “ Poor choild ! It ’s been 
burnin’ on the tip av her toongue many a 
toime.” 


202 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Now,” said Maggie, “we are each to 
take twelve eggs, and then we are to go 
into the kitchen with our aprons on and 
dye them. Then they can dry while we 
are playing and eating supper, so that when 
you go home you can carry them in paper 
bags. ” 

Good Mrs. Flynn had everything ready in 
the kitchen, and such a time as they had ! 
There were three kettles of dye-stuff into 
which they put their eggs, and besides these 
there were tiny embossed pictures of birds 
and flowers which were to be stuck on as 
the children chose. There were little gilt 
stars, too, with which to cover over open- 
ings in the ends of the eggs. 

Maggie had another plan, also, of her own 
devising. She had some tiny initials cut 
from white paper, and stuck these very 
lightly on the side of an egg. Then she 
dipped a small, stiff brush in colouring mat- 
ter and rubbed it over a sieve just above the 
egg. Of course the paper kept the spatters 
off from that part of the shell which it cov- 


Easter Eggs 


203 


ered, and when it was removed there were 
white letters on a speckled background. As 
soon as she had shown them how to do this, 
all the other children were eager to try it. 

Such trouble as they had in cutting out 
their own initials ! At last Lucinda and 
Maggie cut them for the crowd, for Lucinda 
had the ability of an artist, and Maggie’s 
fingers were quick and deft. Finally all the 
eggs were done and drying. The kitchen 
had to be tidied before Mrs. Flynn could 
prepare supper, and she waved her gingham 
apron at the children and drove them out 
like a flock of chickens. 

“Whish! Shoo! Scat! Get along wid 
yez,” she cried, as one after another ran 
back for a last peep at the eggs. “It’s no 
supper at all yez will be havin’ if 1 have to 
get it wid yez dodgin’ under me fate. Clare 
out now ! Clare out ! ” 

The children fled laughingly before her, 
and heard her slide the bolt as she closed 
the door into the parlor. They were all 
washed now, and carried their aprons into 


204 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the bedroom to lie beside their wraps. After 
they had looked at the photographs in the 
big album, Patsy suggested that they play 
“ Rabbit.” 

“ 1 never thought of it before,” he said, 
“but it would be a good Easter game, be- 
cause, you know, we always say that the 
rabbit lays the Easter eggs.” 

“ What do we do first ? ” asked Jack. 

“ 1 ’ll tell you,” replied Patsy. “ First we 
will all get down on our knees in a circle 
and put our hands on the floor in front 
of us.” 

The children did as he said, Helen giggling 
because they looked so funny in that position. 

“ Now,” said Patsy, “ 1 will ask a question 
of the one at my right, and he will answer 
it. Then he will ask it of the one at his 
right, and so on. Do you want to play 
‘ Rabbit ’ ? ” he said to Maggie, who was 
next to him. 

“Yes,” replied Maggie. Then she re- 
peated the question to Ralph, who was 
beyond her. When that question had been 


Easter Eggs 


205 


asked all around, Patsy started another. 
“ How do you play ‘ Rabbit ’ ?” said he. 

Each person replied, “1 do not know,’’ 
and passed the question on, until Jack, who 
was at his left, asked Patsy, “ How do you 
play ‘ Rabbit ’ ? ” 

“1 do not know,” said Patsy, gravely. 
“ Don’t let’s play ‘ Rabbit’ then,” he added. 

The other children did not understand the 
joke so quickly as Maggie. “ Oh, you ras- 
cal,” she said, “to come to my party and 
fool us all so ! You made me get carpet lint 
all over my new red dress that 1 wore to 
Aurelia’s wedding ! ” 

She picked up the stove poker and pre- 
tended that she was going to punish Patsy 
with it, but he fled out of the front door for 
safety. As quick as a flash, Maggie turned 
the key on him, and then they all stood 
laughing under their breath to hear what he 
would say when he discovered the trick 
played on him. 

While they were still waiting, Mrs. Flynn 
opened the door into the kitchen. “Coom 


2o 6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

out to supper now/’ she said, “the whole 
bunch av yez. Maggie, you show ’em where 
to sit.” 

They went, and there, at one end of the 
dining-table (the Flynns always ate in the 
kitchen) sat Patsy, who had slipped around 
the outside way and reached the back door, 
while they still thought him standing by 
the front one. “Come right up and take 
your places,” he said, cordially. “There’s 
plenty for all, and 1 ’m waiting for you.” 

Of course nobody stopped then to talk 
about the game of “Rabbit.” Instead, as 
it happened, they ate rabbit, for Mrs. Flynn 
had made a fine rabbit pot-pie for supper, 
and that, with plenty of good brown bread 
and butter, fine apple-sauce, made from the 
apples which all had helped to gather the 
fall before, and some little frosted cakes, 
made the supper. 

The guests remained until it was quite 
dark, and then started joyfully homeward, 
with their precious paper bags full of colored 
eggs. It is not known exactly how the 


Easter Eggs 


207 


other children managed, but the three little 
Millers got theirs into the house without 
being seen. Aurelia had already gone home 
for the night, and they saw Mrs. Miller, with 
her mending-basket, in the sitting-room. 
The boys carried the three bags around to 
the side door and sneaked them up-stairs, 
while Helen went in at the front one and 
kept Mrs. Miller talking. 

That was the end of that day, for it was 
already a trifle past their early bedtime. 
The next morning, however, found all three 
children up ahead of their parents and 
having a most mysterious visit with Aurelia 
in the kitchen. Before it was over Ralph 
slipped out to the barn and returned with a 
double handful of Billy’s hay. Aurelia set 
out five soup-plates, and in these they made 
tiny nests of hay and filled them with the 
bright eggs. It was a great question how 
to get one ready for Aurelia without her 
knowing it. Jack took an extra soup-plate 
from the china-closet, and then, while 
Aurelia was setting the dining-table, the 


2o 8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

children hurriedly made another nest and 
filled it with eggs. 

This they concealed in the low cupboard 
where the preserving kettles were kept, 
feeling sure that Aurelia would not go there 
unless asked to do so. The other nests 
were placed, one in front of each chair, on 
the breakfast-table. “ Now,” said Jack, “we 
are all ready. Aurelia, you surely won’t let 
Father and Mother come out here ahead of 
time, will you?” 

“Surely,” said Aurelia. “Truly, truly, 
black and bluely. Lay me down and cut 
me in twoly.” Then the little Millers felt 
quite safe, for that was thought to be even 
more binding than when one said, “ Across 
my heart.” 

The time seemed very long while they 
where waiting. Ralph went to the piano 
and played the simple air which is used as 
morning bugle-call in the army, the reveille. 
“1 can’t get ’em up, 1 can’t get ’em up, 1 
can’t get ’em up in the morning ! ” he sang. 

At last everybody was ready for breakfast. 


Easter Eggs 


209 


and Aurelia struck the chimes to call them 
out. The children tried to act as though 
nothing unusual were to happen. Mr. Miller 
was talking as they walked together toward 
the dining-room. “ It looks to me,” he was 
saying, “as though the weather to-day 

would be exactly right for why ! What 

do 1 see ? 1 must put on my eyeglasses 1 
Where are they ? Dear me, 1 am so excited 
that 1 cannot find them ! Christine ! Tell 
me, what are those beautiful bright-colored 
objects by my place? ” 

Mrs. Miller, who was examining hers 
with quiet little exclamations of pleasure, 
said, “Eggs, Herbert, Easter eggs!” And 
the children, dancing around and clapping 
their hands, shouted wildly, “ Easter eggs ! 
Easter eggs ! Easter eggs I Ain’t you s’prised 
though? ” 

There was more excitement when Mr. 
Miller remarked that it seemed almost a 
pity to open and eat such beautiful things, 
and the children, for a panicky moment, 
feared that he had broken one. There was 


14 


210 The Millers and Their Playmates 

another surprise at the breakfast-table, for, 
as you know, the Millers always made 
much of all holidays. This surprise was 
brought in by Aurelia and set down between 
Mrs. Miller and the hyacinths in the middle 
of the table. It was a dish which Mr. Mil- 
ler had bought on his last trip out of town, 
a covered dish for holding eggs. It was 
shaped and colored to represent a hen sit- 
ting on her nest in a round basket. To 
remove the cover and take out the boiled 
eggs inside, one took hold of the hen and 
lifted her off. 

“ My Easter gift to the family,” said Mr. 
Miller. 

“ How pretty and quaint,” exclaimed Mrs. 
Miller. 

“ 1 wonder where Aurelia had that hid- 
den when we were in the kitchen,” said 
Ralph. 

“ I fink,” said Helen, “that the hen looks 
pretty much like Limpy.” 

“She certainly does,” agreed Mr. Miller, 
who, like all the rest of the family, had 


Easter Eggs 


211 


pleasant memories of Lucinda’s pet hen on 
the farm. “ Perhaps if she stood up she 
would not resemble her so much, for, you 
know, Limpy had one lame leg. Shall 1 
make her stand, so that we can see ? ” 

He reached one hand toward the dish, as 
though about to try it. 

“Oh no. Father,” said Ralph, always 
ready to carry on a joke, “you should not 
scare a setting hen. She might quit the 
nest for good, you know.” 

“ I believe you are right, Ralph,” said Mr. 
Miller gravely. “ On second thought 1 will 
let her be until she chooses to get up and 
walk off. Then we can tell.” 

Now the children told in whispers what 
they had planned for Aurelia and asked 
Mrs. Miller to help them make her find her 
eggs, “just call her in real sort of care- 
lessly,” suggested jack, “and then make 
some excuse about her going where they 
are.” 

“You can do it, can’t you ? ” asked Ralph 
anxiously, “just say, ‘ Aurelia, 1 wish you 


212 The Millers and Their Playmates 

would look at those preserving kettles and 
be sure that they are all right,’ or something 
like that.” 

“ 1 ’ll try,” replied his mother. “Aurelia,” 
she said, when that good woman answered 
the bell, “ 1 wish you would see whether 1 
left my diamond ring in the kitchen. 1 laid 
it down out there the other day. Look in 
the cupboard where the preserving kettles 
are.” 

The little Millers peeped through the 
crack of the pantry door. Aurelia went to 
the cupboard and drew out a nestful of 
eggs. A card was in it which read, “To 
Aurelia.” 

“Sakes alive!” she said. “Now ain’t 
those fine I 1 wish 1 owned the hen that 
lays ’em like that. She beats any breed 
o’ hens 1 ever kep’. Wonder how she got 
in here anyhow ? ” 

“We ’re the hens, Aurelia,” cried Helen, 
unable to keep still any longer. “ Don’t 
you fink we are pretty big ones ? ” 

“ Land sakes I ” said Aurelia, making a 


Easter Eggs 


213 


quick turn and hugging them all together in 
her apron. “You’re bigger ’n Plymouth 
Rocks, an’ a heap nicer. Thank you all, 
and wish you joyous Easter. Now run 
back and get your breakfast ate, so 1 can do 
my dishes.” 

After their morning tasks were done, the 
children had their usual hunt for tiny candy 
eggs, which were hidden around the house. 
Then they dressed and went to church, a 
happy little group, chattering softly on the 
way about all the little frolics of Saturday 
and Sunday. 

Ralph turned around to his parents. 

“ Would n’t you call this a most surprising 
time of the year ? ” he asked, for he enjoyed 
puns. 

“ Egg-zactly,” said Mr. Miller. 

“ Egg-ceedingly,” added Mrs. Miller. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


HIGH WATER. 

TF Winthrop had been a river town there 
^ is no telling what might have happened 
that spring, for the heavy snow melted rap- 
idly and it rained for three days in succession. 
On Wednesday all the little Millers came 
home from school with wet feet, having had 
to go through puddles which came above 
their rubbers. On Thursday they started off 
in three pairs of shiny new rubber boots, 
and went through the puddles on purpose. 
On Friday they found it wise to carry long 
sticks, with which to measure the depth of 
puddles before stepping into them. On 
Saturday the rain stopped and the sun shone, 
and everywhere were broad pools reflecting 
the blue sky overhead. 

That morning Ralph crawled out of bed with 
214 


High Water 


215 


only one eye open, and looked through 
the window. “ Goody 1 ” he cried, and 
flung his pillow over onto Jack’s small iron 
bedstead, where it landed squarely on jack’s 
face. Jack sat bolt upright at once, and fired 
back the pillow with great vigor and very 
sleepy aim. 

“Quit ! ” he cried. Don’t you know any 
better than to why are you hurrying so ? ” 

“Look out the window ’n’ you’ll see,” 
replied Ralph, pulling on his clothing with 
great Jerks. 

“ Fire ? ” asked Jack. 

“ \J\\-uh ! Water ! ” replied Ralph. “ See 
that wooden walk all afloat out there? ‘F 1 
get dressed in time, I ’m going out there ’n’ 
jump up’n’ down on it before breakfast, ’n’ see 
the water come up through the cracks when 
it goes down. It ’ll squash up just dandy ! ” 

“ Me too ! ” cried Jack, now quite wide 
awake, and bursting a button off his paja- 
mas in his haste. 

Alas for their hopes ! The breakfast bell 
rang just as they were drawing on their rub- 


2i 6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

her boots, and after breakfast they had their 
regular tasks to do before playing. Even 
then, however, they were on the porch and 
ready for a frolic at a quarter after eight. 
Mr. and Mrs. Miller stood there with them. 

“Now, Mother,” jack said, “you must 
tell us exactly what we must not do, be- 
cause it really seems to me that there are 
such lots of jolly things to do that some of 
them must be wicked ! ” 

Mrs. Miller laughed. “You must not 
do anything to spoil property or to annoy 
people,” she said, “and yon must not go 
around in wet clothing. That is all. Now 
be happy and help the other children to be.” 

“After a little, they tired of jouncing up 
and down on the floating sidewalk, and de- 
vised a new plan. Aurelia let them have the 
clothes-line, and they fastened one end of it 
to the railing of the back porch, and the 
other to the top rail of the back fence. Then 
they took an old mortar-box, which had 
been used by the builders, and made a ferry- 
boat of it. This they intended to run back 


High Water 


217 


and forth over part of the garden, which 
was low ground and covered in places by at 
least two feet of water. 

“This is the way they used to run ferry- 
boats across rivers,” said Ralph. “1 read 
about it in some book or other. They had 
a stout cable across the stream, and then 
they — then they — well, 1 don’t know just 
how they did manage it, and it seems to 
me that there was a horse about it, some- 
how. And there used to be one of that 
sort a while ago, down near Washington or 
somewhere.” 

“Huh!” said jack. “Guess 1 can talk 
about things, too. Used to be something 
like this somewhere or other, some time 
or other, only it wasn’t exactly like it 
either ! ” 

Ralph pouted a little, but he knew that 
he need not complain, for his readiness to 
give information on all possible subjects was 
already a joke in the family. 

“ 1 can show you how we ’ll work this all 
right,” he said, springing into the mortar- 


2 i 8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

box and catching hold of the rope. He stood 
in the middle of the box and braced his feet 
far apart. Then he caught hold of the 
rope, pulled, and, as the box moved slowly 
through the water, caught hold again far- 
ther on, and pulled. The box moved faster 
and faster, and at last reached the back fence 
in fine style, fetching up with a bump that 
made Ralph stagger. 

“ It ’s my turn, now,” called jack, as loudly 
as though he had been hallooing across a 
real river, and a wide one at that. Ralph 
started back at once. 

“ I fink ladies ought to have first chances 
on ferry-boats,” remarked Helen, “ and that 
is what 1 am, you know.” 

“Give her the next turn, jack,” said 
Ralph. “ She really ought to have it.” 

“ Humph ! Why did n’t you think about 
that sooner?” demanded jack, with a good 
deal of spunk. “You took your turn with- 
out even saying, ‘ May 1 ? ’ and now you tell 
me to give Helen my turn because she is a 
girl. 1 like that ! ” 


High Water 


219 


Helen’s eyes began to fill with tears. She 
was not used to hearing her brothers talk in 
this way, but she was soon comforted. 

“1 didn’t think,” said Ralph, apologeti- 
cally. “ It was my invention, and I wanted 
to how it see worked. That was all. 1 
guess inventors usually do go on first trips, 
don’t they ? Robert Fulton went along 
on the first trip of his little steamer, the 
Clermont.” 

“He took some friends along, though,” 
added Helen, who was quite familiar with 
the story of that first steamboat. 

“He had to go, because it was dangerous, ” 
suggested Jack. “People thought it was 
going to bust or explode or blow up or 
something, and he ought to be willing to 
risk it on his own invention if he expected 
other people to.” 

Helen looked at the mortar-box rather 
anxiously. “ There is n’t anyfing about this 
to igsplode, is there ? ” she asked. 

Then they all laughed, and Jack said that 
she should have the next turn anyhow, 


220 The Millers and Their Playmates 

because she was so funny. Ralph offered to 
give up his next one, but she would not 
take it, so all were happy again. 

For a while they took turns going to the 
fence and back. Then they thought it would 
be great fun if they could all be over there 
at once, and as it would safely carry only 
one at a time. Jack hunted up another rope, 
and Ralph drove a big nail into the end of 
the ferry-boat. When this was done the 
rope was fastened to it, and each child pulled 
himself over in the old way, climbed onto 
the fence, and roosted there like a chicken, 
while the ferry-boat was pulled back to the 
porch by means of the second rope. 

After they tired of that, and began to find 
the top rail of the porch an uncomfortable 
seat, they tied the boat to the fence and be- 
gan climbing over the big woodpile beside 
it. The long rain had soaked up all the 
mosses and lichens on the beech sticks, and. 
they made collections of the prettiest bits, 
piling them up in their handkerchiefs. A 
strong wind was blowing, and they had to 


High Water 


221 


guard their mosses carefully to prevent 
their being carried off into the pool. Mean- 
while, the same wind had been pushing and 
pushing at the loosely-tied ferry-boat, and 
slowly slipping the loop of rope off from the 
fence. Then the boat drifted away from 
both fence and woodpile until it was stopped 
by a couple of small fruit-trees. There is no 
telling how long it might have stayed there 
without being noticed, if the fire-alarm 
whistle had not sounded. 

At the first blast of the whistle both boys 
dropped their mosses and ran for the boat, 
each crying that he knew it was his turn. 
Helen stopped to pick up the scattered bits. 

“There now, look what you ’ve done,” 
exclaimed Ralph angrily, “gone and tied it 
so loosely that it ’s drifted off ! ” 

“ 1 don’t care ! You felt of the knot and 
said it was all right ! ” retorted Jack. 

. “What shall we do?” they asked each 
other next, feeling that no time must be 
wasted on a quarrel when some building 
was afire. 


222 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Aurelia! Aurelia!” shouted Ralph. 

“ Mother! ” cried Jack. 

Nobody answered, for both were already 
at the front gate and the wind carried the 
sound away from them. 

“Odear! I know it is a big one!” ex- 
claimed Ralph, dancing up and down with 
impatience, as he looked at the wide pool 
and realized that it would come above his 
boot-tops. 

“Yes sir!” agreed jack. “Hear that 
whistle, will you ? ” he added, as the en- 
gineer at the waterworks ran up and down 
the scale in a way that always meant a 
large fire. 

“Come along, fellows!” shouted Ben 
Stuart, as he ran down the street. “They 
say it ’s the flour-mill.” 

“I’m going,” declared Ralph, climbing 
down the end of the pile where it sloped 
off into the water. 

“So ’m 1,” said jack, following as fast as 
he could. 

Helen saw them going and was fright- 


High Water 


223 


ened. “ BoysJ Boys! ” she scolded. “ You ’re 
being bad if you get wet. Mother said you 
must not. You must not! ’Sides, you ’ll 
leave me all alone, and 1 can’t get the boat, 
and 1 can’t ever get off at all till Father 
comes. Please don’t go away and leave me! 
1 ’ll fink you ’re meaner ’n anyfing if you 
do. Boys! ” 

But the boys were gone, muttering that 
they “didn’t care,” and that they “were 
always allowed to go to daylight fires any- 
how.” Helen remained on the woodpile, 
chattering away as fiercely as a red squirrel 
until the tears came, and she sank down in 
a miserable little heap on the woodpile and 
wiped her eyes on the handkerchief filled 
with moss. The corners of the handker- 
chief had been tied together, but tiny scraps 
stuck out here and there and made brown 
and green streaks on her face as she mopped 
away her tears. 

Still nobody heard her calling for help. 
The fire was indeed a large one for Win- 
throp, and Mrs. Miller and Aurelia had 


224 The Millers and Their Playmates 

walked down the street a way to make sure 
that it was not spreading toward their 
homes. Helen remembered hearing her 
father say that there was almost always one 
good way out of a dilficulty, if people were 
only patient and clever enough to find it. 

“O dear! ’’she sighed. “If that puddle 
were not quite so wide and quite so deep 
in the field back of our fence, 1 would climb 
down that side and get around to the street 
that way. If 1 were a fairy, I’d just wave 
my wand and dry it right up. . . Mother 
says that little girls can do lots of things 
just as well as fairies, though. . . I wonder 
. . I just b’lieve. . . I’ll try it anyhow, 
’cause I ’m sure Father won’t care when 1 
tell him why 1 had to, and anyhow 1 can put 
them back as soon as the puddles dry up 1 ” 

Saying this, Helen chose the narrowest 
shallow place and began dropping wood 
into the puddle in the field back of their 
house. It was really part of the same one, 
you know, on which they had been playing, 
only the fence and the woodpile divided it. 


High Water 


225 


Every stick made a big splash, but Helen 
worked hard and fast, aiming the stick at 
precisely the right place and then dodging 
back to keep from being spattered. 

When twenty sticks had been thrown 
over, Helen climbed down the fence and 
pulled a fishpole after her, one which Jack 
had been about to use when the alarm 
sounded. Taking the pole to steady her- 
self, she managed to walk on the wood 
which lay under the water and get out of 
the puddle without its reaching the top of 
her boots. When that was done it took only a 
minute more for her to cross to another fence, 
climb over that into the street, and run 
toward the fire, the happiest little girl in 
Winthrop. 

Surely she was the happiest little girl. 
Surely, also, she was the last child to 
reach the fire. Ralph and jack had come 
up, breathless and dripping wet from the 
waist down, at least fifteen minutes 
before she got there. They edged their 
way as far forward as they were allowed 


226 The Millers and Their Playmates 

to go — and came face to face with their 
father ! 

“ My sons !” he said, putting a hand on 
the shoulder of each. “ How do you hap- 
pen to be here in this condition ?” 

Jack’s face turned very red. Ralph looked 
away from his father and changed his weight 
from one foot to the other. 

“ 1 wish an answer,” said Mr. Miller. 

“Well, you see,” said Ralph, “we were 
all on top of the woodpile when the alarm 
sounded, and our boat had blown away 
somehow, and so we had to wade, and we 
got wet some.” 

“A good deal, 1 should say,” said Mr. 
Miller grimly. “ Please explain to me why 
you ‘had to wade.’ 1 do not see the need 
of it myself, and 1 remember that Mother 
said you must keep dry.” 

“Why, we wanted to see the fire,” ex- 
plained Jack, trying not to show how 
uncomfortable he felt. “ You know you ’ve 
always let us go to fires in the daytime.” 

“ Um-m,” said Mr. Miller. “ How about 


High Water 


227 


Helen? Was she on the woodpile, too?” 

The boys hung their heads and mur- 
mured “ Yes.” 

“ Where is she now ?” he said. 

Jack did not reply. Ralph said. “Guess 
she ’s still there.” 

“Oh! Then she did not ‘ have to ’ wade 
through puddles and come?” asked Mr. 
Miller. 

“She’s a girl,” the boys muttered. 
“That ’s a lot different.” 

“ 1 feel sure,” said Mr. Miller very gravely, 
“that if you boys had thought as much 
about being obedient as about having a good 
time, you would have found some way of 
reaching here without getting wet.” He 
drew pencil and notebook from his pocket, 
wrote a note on a leaf, and tore it out, hand- 
ing it to Ralph. 

“ Go home as fast as you both can run,” 
he said, “ and hand that to your mother. If 
she is not there, give it to Aurelia. If neither 
is there, read it yourselves and follow the 
directions.” 


2 28 The Millers and Their Playmates 

The boys turned in silence and started 
homeward. Ralph sniffed and hunted des- 
perately for the handkerchief which he had 
left on the woodpile. Jack’s face was still 
ablaze, partly from running to the fire, but 
more from shame. Both boys knew that it 
would be quite useless to tease their father, 
or to delay their home-going. It was not 
the first time that they had been sent home 
with a note, and they knew that at noon 
Mr. Miller would ask and be told exactly 
at what time that note had been delivered. 
They had no hope of being allowed to re- 
turn to the fire, and they began to wonder 
what had become of Helen. 

Mrs. Miller was there by the time they 
reached home, and looked them over sharply 
before reading the note. It was as follows: 

Dear Christine: 

1 have just found these boys at the fire, 
dripping wet and with boots full of water. 
They left Helen on the woodpile, without 
means of escape, and disobeyed you by get- 


High Water 229 

ting wet — all for the sake of coming. Send 
them to bed. Herbert. 

Mrs. Miller read it twice. “ Leave your 
boots out here on the porch,” she said. 
“ Then go quickly to the bathroom and put 
your wet things in the tub. As soon as you 
are well dried and in bed 1 will bring you 
some warm drinks.” 

“ But, Mother,” said Ralph, too penitent to 
be angry, “may we see about Helen first? 
We are wet now, anyway, so we might as 
well get the boat for her before we go to bed.” 

Mrs. Miller nodded. “You must be quick 
about it,” she said. 

The boys ran around the house. They 
looked. They called. But no sign of Helen 
could they find, and very dolefully they 
went back to the house. 

“We can’t find her anywhere,” they 
reported. 

“ O dear ! ” said Mrs. Miller. “ 1 wonder 
if she waded through that deep water and 
went to the fire. She will surely be ill if 


230 The Millers and Their Playmates 

she did. Get into bed quickly, and then I 
will go down to hunt for her.” 

“Do you want to go, Mother?” asked 
Ralph. 

“ 1 wanted to write on my new book,” she 
replied. 

Two very meek boys swallowed their hot 
ginger tea and snuggled down in bed. A 
minute later they heard the front door close 
behind their mother. 

Jack was the first to cry aloud. Ralph 
joined him on the second wail. “ She did n’t 
scold a bit,” jack said. 

“And if she waded through the puddle, 
she did it because we did,” sobbed Ralph. 

“And if she ’s ill it will be our fault,” cried 
jack. “ And maybe she will die of ammonia 
or something.” 

“And I know she is in a hurry to finish 
her book,” said Ralph. 

Then they stopped talking and Just cried. 

Meanwhile, .Mrs. Miller reached the scene 
of the fire and found Helen, her face all 
streaked with green and brown, standing 


High Water 


231 


near Maggie and Lucinda and chewing on a 
stick of licorice wood. Her clothing was 
perfectly dry. 

“May 1 stay?” she asked. “1 am all 
right, and my clothes are all dry, ’cause 1 
made a little path with chunks of wood 
under the water.” 

“Stay as long as you wish,” said her 
mother, with a sigh of relief. “You are a 
good child, and if you want to be late for 
dinner, you may.” 

Ralph and Jack were much comforted 
when they heard the news, and then, their 
anxiety about her being over, they began to 
pity themselves. 

“The roof is probably going to fall in, in 
about two minutes,” said Ralph. 

“We could have seen every bit of it from 
where we stood,” groaned jack. “1 don’t 
see how Helen ever thought of using the 
wood that way,” he added. “And she is 
only a girl, too ! ” 

“Bet you 1 know,” said Ralph, sitting 
bolt upright. “You see she just thought 


232 The Millers and Their Playmates 

she had to stay there until she could get 
away dry, so she had to find out some 
way. You know when folks have to, they 
can.” 

When Helen came home, the fire was all 
over and only smoking ashes remained. She 
had had a fine time, and was quite ready to 
pity and forgive her unfortunate brothers, 
who had been obliged to remain in bed until 
dinner-time and in the house afterward. 

“Tell you what I’ll do,” she said, after 
thinking for a minute and peeping into a 
small yellow paper bag a few times. “ I ’ll 
give you my choc-lat mice. Rosa Jacobs 
gave me three, but I ate one. You may 
have the rest.” 

“Oh, thank you,” cried the boys, and 
Jack added, “I’m sorry 1 said you were 
only a girl. You ar’ n’t. You are as clever 
as a boy.” 

“ Cleverer ! ” said Ralph, as he bit off the 
head of his chocolate mouse. “ I ’ll never, 
never call you ‘ only a girl ’ again.” 

“1 don’t care,” said Helen, contentedly. 


High Water 233 

“I’d rather be a girl, ’cause then 1 don’t get 
so dirty ! ” 

“The worst thing about me now,” said 
Ralph, “ is that 1 feel so mean about spoiling 
Mother’s morning.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


THE PLAY. 

TF you have ever got your rubber boots 
^ full of water, you know how long it 
takes to get them thoroughly dried out. 
The Miller boys’ boots could not be worn 
again until Tuesday and by that time the 
puddles were almost gone. It was no fun 
to play out-of-doors when they had to keep 
away from the water, and when all the 
other boys were discussing the fire that 
they had missed watching, so they stayed 
inside as much as possible. 

On Saturday afternoon, Lucinda, who 
had a cold and could not play out, came 
over to visit them. “ Let ’s begin our play,” 
she said. “We can get it all planned out 
this afternoon, and then we can get the 
scenery ready and fix up our theatre some 


234 


The Play 


235 


other day. Do you suppose your father 
will let us have it in the barn over on your 
new place when it ’s a little warmer ? ” 

“I think so,” said Ralph. “They will 
not be working in it for a while.” 

“Then we’ll put up an ‘Opera-House’ 
sign on the outside,” said Lucinda, “and 
make everything very grand. Won’t it seem 
funny? Now it is only an empty barn. 
Then it will be an opera-house, and then, 
next fall, it will be a regular home upstairs, 
where I live with the Hathaways, and 
where Billy and the lawn-mower stay 
downstairs.” 

“And the automobile, if we ever get 
one,” sighed Ralph, who longed for an 
auto every day, and read all the motor- 
car advertisements in his father’s maga- 
zines. 

“ Oh, machinery, machinery, machinery! ” 
said Jack, who had not the least mechanical 
ability and sometimes wished that Ralph 
had not. “You will turn into a machine 
some day ! ’ ’ 


236 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“O boys,” said Lucinda, “do get at the 
play.” 

“ All right,” agreed Jack. “ How do you 
begin ? 1 can write a book all right, you 
know, but 1 don’t understand how to fix up 
a play. 1 have a good name for it, though. 
Call it The Robbers." 

“ That is good,” said Ralph. 

And Lucinda added, “ 1 don’t see how 
you can think of such grand names right 
off. Did you get it out of your own head ? ” 

“Yes,” said jack carelessly. “You see 
after a fellow has begun to write books he 
thinks of lots of things. We must have the 
robbers just terribly wicked.” 

“ Mother would n’t want us to chew to- 
bacco or anything like that, even on the 
stage,” warned Ralph. 

“ Use gum,” said Lucinda, “if you have 
to chew anything, but 1 don’t believe you 
will. I saw a villain once on the stage — 
that other time 1 went, besides Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin, you know. He had great heavy 
eyebrows and black moustache and carried 


The Play 


237 


a revolver and a long knife in his boots. 
He talked way down in his stomach and 
scowled like everything.” 

“ Let me be a villain,” said Ralph. “ What 
does it mean, anyhow ? ” 

“ Oh, anybody that is dreadfully wicked,” 
replied Lucinda. “ You can be one and Jim- 
mie can be another, because he has a false 
moustache that he bought down-town.” 

“I’m going to be a poor little boy that 
finds out about the robbers and scares them 
away,” said jack. 

“1 tell you what,” suggested Ralph, 
“you be the boy and let Patsy be the rich 
man that they were going to rob, and then 
he can reward you.” 

“ Uh-hnh,” said Jack. “Sort of like 
Robert in the book 1 wrote. 1 always like 
stories and things where poor children get 
rich.” 

“ 1 don’t care so much what 1 am,” said 
Lucinda, “only 1 want to let down my hair 
and faint away. 1 wonder what Helen 
would like to be ? Where is she ? ” 


238 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“She is out wading again,” said Ralph. 
“She won’t care much as long as you let 
her wear bracelets.” 

“She might be Jack’s little sister in the 
play,” suggested Lucinda, “and then, when 
the rich man rewarded jack, he could give 
him some bracelets for his sister.” 

“All right,” agreed the boys, and Ralph 
added, “ What shall we have Maggie be ?’’ 

“She has decided that she would rather 
not act,” replied Lucinda. “She would 
rather be the one to make the announce- 
ments. 1 believe, though, she would just 
as soon do something separate, like singing 
or dancing, where she would n’t have to 
dress up or fix her face any.” 

“ We ’ll ask her,” said the rest, and they 
made an outline of the play and a list of the 
scenery needed. Lucinda had brought over 
her precious old play-bill, and that had 
given them many ideas. Mrs. Miller passed 
by the playroom door and paused to visit 
a minute, so they asked her advice about a 
few things. 


The Play 


239 


From that time on the days were grow- 
ing warmer, and the children were allowed 
to go in and out of the barn on the new 
place. The doors, big and little, always 
stood wide open, and the sunshine pouring 
in lighted up a most remarkable “opera 
house.” 

The play was to be given in tho main 
part of the barn, and for a time they were 
much perplexed about the stage. Ralph 
had asked his father to have the carpenters 
build one, but of course Mr. Miller had to 
refuse. Then Patsy tried laying some long 
planks across between two saw-horses. 
This make a very narrow stage and ex- 
tremely jiggly in the middle, but they got 
along with it very well until one of the rob- 
bers (it was Ralph) stepped backward onto 
a projecting end to make his most thrilling 
speech. Then up came the other end of 
the plank on which he stood and down 
went the robber, speech, tin knife, and all. 

After that they took a lot of packing- 
cases, which had been stacked up in one of 


240 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the empty stalls, and laid them close to- 
gether. Most of them were of the same 
size, eighteen inches thick, and these made 
the front part of the stage. The few that 
were thicker were put in the background, 
where they were used as seats or rocks — 
seats during parlor scenes and rocks when 
the scene was an out-of-door one. When 
they were seats, draperies of some sort 
were thrown over them. The stage was 
slightly uneven and the actors and actresses 
had to learn to lift their feet quite high 
while on it. 

Mrs. Miller forbade the use of footlights, 
but consented to have many lanterns hung 
on each side of the stage. “ It won’t mat- 
ter if there are none above the audience,” 
she said. “ For my part^ 1 prefer the main 
part ot a theatre dark. It makes the stage 
look better.” 

At last a night was chosen and the chil- 
dren set out to sell tickets in the neighbor- 
hood. The tickets were printed by the 
girls and sold by all the troupe — price five 


The Play 


241 


cents for grown people and three cents for 
children. Twenty-five had been prepared. 
These were sold in less than an hour and 
another twenty-five made in great haste. 
The play was to be given on a Friday 
evening, two weeks after the flood. 

“It is too bad that barn is so small,” 
complained Jack, as he was starting out 
with his second package of tickets. “ 1 
know there ’d be a lot of children from 
other parts of town if we asked them to 
buy tickets.” 

“ You might give a matinee on Saturday 
for children only,” suggested Mrs. Miller. 

“A matin-what?” asked jack. “And 
what does it mean anyhow ? ” 

“ A matinee,” said Mrs. Miller. (It is pro- 
nounced matinay, you know.) “That means 
a daylight acting of play or opera.” 

“ Perhaps we will,” said jack. We want 
to make all the money we can.” 

“ For what ? ” asked his mother, but jack 
had gone before she asked. 

When evening came, Mr. Miller put on a 


242 The Millers and Their Playmates 

white tie and stuck a flower into his button- 
hole, and stood in the doorway of the barn, 
ready to help the boys if they wished him 
to do so. Mrs. Miller looked very sweet in 
her pretty little bonnet and white shawl. 
She carried her best fan, too, which greatly 
delighted her children. 

The seats for the audience were planks 
laid across soap-boxes or saw-horses, and 
surely there was never a merrier audience 
anywhere. Sallie, Janice, Bertha, and Rosa 
sat in the very front row, and Donald and 
Dorothy Black were Just behind them. A 
few other children from the neighborhood 
were there, and nearly all their parents. 
Mrs. Flannigan brought the baby, because 
she had nobody with whom to leave her, 
and that delightful infant slept all evening 
in a manger full of hay close by Mrs. Flan- 
nigan ’s seat. 

There were several surprises. The first 
was when Professor Harding, who had not 
been asked to buy a ticket, came to the 
door and gravely presented his nickel for 


243 


The Play 

admission. The next was when Mr. Field, 
the banker, asked for a box seat. 

“They are ’most all boxes, Mr. Field,” said 
Ralph, who had never heard a part of a 
theatre called a box. “They are boxes or 
planks placed on boxes. We had a few 
stools, but they are all down in front where 
the three-cent children sit.” 

Mr. Field, who was stout and jolly, 
chuckled at the mention of the three-cent 
children, and said, “Never mind about my 
box seat. I think 1 will take a plank seat 
beside some of these five-cent friends of 
mine.” 

Behind the curtain, an old buggy cover, 
there was much excitement and hurrying 
around, and about once every minute some 
one of the actors would pull the curtain 
aside an inch or two and peep out. At the 
door Ralph excitedly counted the tickets 
that he had taken. 

“They are all in,” he whispered. “ Now, 
Father, get your fiddle.” 

Lately Mr. Miller had taken up his old 


244 The Millers and Their Playmates 

violin and practised a little, and now he 
lifted it from the case and began playing 
simple Irish melodies that set many feet to 
marking time on the barn floor. Ralph dis- 
appeared behind the curtain. 

Five minutes later somebody pulled the 
curtain aside a bit and whispered loudly, 
“We are all ready now,” at which Mr. Mil- 
ler smilingly gave a final flourish with his 
bow and sat down near the stage. A bell 
sounded behind the curtain, it parted in the 
middle, and slid somewhat jerkily to the 
sides. 

In the centre of the stage sat a man (Pat- 
sy) who was evidently very rich. He was 
counting his money at a table. The audi- 
ence could not see all of the money, because 
there were other things on the table, but 
they could hear him count and heard the 
clink of coin. He was evidently at home, 
for he wore an elegant bath-robe dressing- 
gown and slippers. A huge ring glistened 
on one of his hands. 

Seated on the couch was a young lady in 


The Play 


245 


a trained gown (the gown looked like an old 
one of Mrs. Miller’s). She was reading a 
book and turning the leaves rather faster 
than people generally turn them. Her hair 
was done quite high upon her head and she 
felt of it often. When the man, who ap- 
peared to be her father, finished counting his 
money, she began telling him of the grand 
ball which she had attended the night before, 
and asked him to buy her a new diamond 
necklace. 

“ My old one is almost worn out,” she 
said. “ If there are any pretty diamond brace- 
lets in the store,” she added, “please bring 
me a couple of them.” 

Her father agreed and they talked of many 
different things. Once she walked to the 
window (a big sheet of paper marked off for 
the sash and pinned against the wall, with 
curtains draped back from it), and looked 
out. 

“Ah,” she said, “how terribly dark and 
wild the night is 1 ” 

Toward the end of the scene she said. 


246 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ How much money was there to-night, 
Father ?” 

“ A little over twenty millions,” he replied. 

“Ah,” said the young lady, carefully ar- 
ranging her train and clasping her hands, as 
the curtains closed before her. “ How rich 
we are 1 ” 

As soon as the applause died down, Mr. 
Miller took his violin again and played dur- 
ing the change of scene, while everybody 
chatted and laughed. Mr. Field said he 
feared the rich old gentleman would have 
trouble yet. “That is too much money to 
keep in the house,” he said. “He ought to 
bring it down to my bank for safe-keeping.” 

The curtain parted again. The lanterns 
which lighted the stage had been turned 
low, and several armfuls of hay, piled on 
what had recently been the couch, showed 
that this scene was laid in a barn. The 
only actor on the stage was Billy, the 
burro, who was tied to one side and con- 
tentedly nibbled a late supper. 

Soon entered jack and Helen, as the very 


The Play 


247 


poor boy and his little sister. They talked 
about how hungry they were, and the boy 
told his sister that she should go to sleep at 
once and be ready to go out with him in the 
morning, when he blacked shoes and sold 
papers. She said she was glad that they 
were allowed to sleep in such a nice barn, 
because it was better than sleeping out of 
doors. Then she fell asleep and her brother 
began tidying up his boot-blacking box. 
A slight sound showed that some one was 
about to enter the barn, and the boy hid in 
the hay. Then entered two most desperate 
looking robbers (Ralph and Jimmie), who 
sat on the floor and planned to rob the home 
of the very rich man and his daughter the 
next night. 

As they talked, the poor boy could be 
seen by the audience to raise his head and 
listen. At length the robbers left, the taller 
one remarking in a very deep voice, “To- 
morrow night, and we shall be wealthy 
beyond compare ! ” 

When they were gone, the poor boy stole 


248 The Millers and Their Playmates 

down from his bed on the hay and said, 
“They shall be foiled!” 

The curtains closed. 

The next act showed the rich man at 
home alone. The boy entered, clothed very 
shabbily. “Aha, my little man,” said the 
rich man. “What can 1 do for you to-day ?” 

The boy told what he had overheard. 
The man was very grateful and gave him 
money, promising to do more for him if he 
would assist in driving away the robbers 
when they came. He also sent a pair of 
bracelets to the boy’s little sister. The boy 
left and the rich man’s daughter entered, 
holding her head very stiffly, and with 
her hair looking as though it needed a few 
more pins to hold it securely. The man 
told her that robbers were coming that 
night. The young lady raised both hands 
to her head, screamed “ Robbers ! ” and 
fainted, while her heavy coil of hair unrolled 
and fell over her shoulders. The man paid 
no attention to her, but raised his hands 
above his head and cried, “Now all my 


The Play 


249 


hope is in that brave boy, my deliverer ! ” 

Thus ended the third act. 

Before the fourth act Maggie, who had 
declined to take part in the play, came down 
and asked Mrs. Miller to go behind the cur- 
tain and help for a few minutes. She also 
had a message to the younger members of 
the audience. “The boys say that you 
must n’t be scared,” she said, “when they 
shoot in this act, because they won’t use 
any bullets. It will all be quite safe, only it 
sounds scary.” 

Her message delivered, Maggie took her 
place before the curtain and sang a little Irish 
lullaby, with Mr. Miller playing the accom- 
paniment. It was something which he had 
overheard her singing the night before, and 
had insisted she should give it at the enter- 
tainment. They had kept it as a secret un- 
til the last minute, and Maggie had another 
Irish song ready when the loud applause 
called her back. 

The fourth act showed the rich man’s house 
again. The boy, entering with two large 


250 The Millers and Their Playmates 

toy pistols, hid himself behind a curtain after 
saying that it was already midnight. The 
light was very dim. He was hardly hidden 
when the two robbers entered on tiptoe. 
They wore black masks over their faces and 
carried dark-lanterns made of tomato cans. 
At every second step they said “ Hist ! ” or 
“ Sh ! ” in a loud whisper. 

The little girls, down in the front seats, 
huddled closer together and got hold of 
each other’s hands. 

The robbers hunted high and low for the 
money, but never touched the curtain be- 
hind which the boy stood hidden. At last 
one found the cupboard where the money 
was. “Aha !” he cried. “ 1 have found it 1” 

The other robber joined him, and together 
they were lifting the bags of coin, when the 
boy, stepping from behind the curtain, fired 
the two pistols at once, and the robbers fell 
dead. The boy advanced to the front of the 
stage. “ Foiled ! ” said he. “ Foiled ! ” 

The next and last scene required a good 
deal of preparation. Mr, Miller declared 


251 


The Play 

that he had played all the tunes he knew at 
least twice, so Mr. Jacobs took the violin and 
bent his blond head over it, while he played 
some of the airs he had loved in Europe, 
when he was a boy. “ Ve end mit a big 
sing, eh ?”said he,“someding ve all know ?” 

“ It is a good idea,” said Mr. Miller. “ I 
will tell the troupe.” 

The last act showed the same scene as be- 
fore, except that the dead robbers were gone 
and the lights turned up. The rich man and 
his daughter had taken the boy and his sis- 
ter into their home to live, and both were 
dressed in their Sunday best, the little girl 
wearing her bracelets at last. The rich man 
made a speech, and presented the boy with 
a gold watch and chain and the little girl 
with a burro, leading Billy onto the stage as 
he spoke. Billy the obedient, who always 
did as he was told, and behaved beautifully. 

“ And now,” said the rich man, “ Let us 
end our evening with a song.” 

The actors all joined hands, Billy standing 
in the middle, between the rich man and the 


252 The Millers and Their Playmates 

boy, and the young lady and the little boy on 
either side. The robbers, apparently quite 
recovered from their recent deaths, came to 
stand at the ends of the lines, and Mr. Ja- 
cobs struck up America. 

“ Everybody stand !” shouted Mr. Miller, 
and he led off in singing. The Flannigan 
baby awakened and was taken up, but cried 
for only a minute. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs 
in their more broken German, and Mrs. Flynn 
in her strong Irish brogue, joined as heartily 
as any in the national song. 

When it ended and everybody was talk- 
ing at once, it seemed to strike Billy that he 
had not done his part, so he braced his feet 
on the little stage where he still stood and 
brayed and brayed. And how everybody 
laughed! 

“ He was saying he hat a goot time too,” 
said Mr. Jacobs. “ Eh, Rosa, how you like 
to gif a little play on stage yourself, some- 
dimes ? De children did veil, very veil. 
1 haf enchoyed myself greatly.” 

Behind the curtain Aurelia was helping 


The Play 


253 


the tired little actors. “ You did first rate,” 
she said. “ 1 never enjoyed a play so much 
in my life, not even in a real theatre.” 

“ Honest, Aurelia ?” asked the children. 

“ Honest,” she said. “ But perhaps it was 
partly because 1 never saw one before where 
most of the troupe sort of belonged to me.” 

“ Ah-h-h !” yawned the little boy who 
had supported his little sister and killed two 
robbers. “ Don’t anybody wake me up in 
the morning, please. I’d rather sleep than 
to eat breakfast, even if we should have 
pancakes.” Then he added anxiously, “ But 
you won’t have them this time, will you, 
Aurelia ? ” 

“No,” saidshe. “ I’ll put ’em off till next 
week. Now all you youngsters scatter off 
home as tight as you can, and go to bed.” 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE WANDERERS. 

M rs. miller was just settling herself for 
a morning’s work on the last chapters 
of the new book, when Ralph knocked on 
the library door. She sighed but called out 
“ Come !” 

“You hadn’t begun yet, had you?” he 
said. “At first 1 thought 1 wouldn’t 
knock, but the more 1 thought about it 
the more I was sure you would n’t mind. I 
want to go so very badly that I think it is 
important.” 

“ Do your errand quickly, please,” said 
his mother. 

“Well, it is this way,” explained Ralph. 
“ 1 want to just wander off somewhere and 
keep on going until 1 am tired of it. 1 've 
felt that way quite a while, and now it’s 

254 


The Wanderers 255 

spring vacation, and I wondered if you 
wouldn’t be willing that we should. 

“ We ? ” asked his mother. 

“Yes, Jack wants to go almost as badly 
as 1 do. He would n’t come in because he 
thought you were writing, but he is listen- 
ing at the door now.” 

“Come in, jack,” cried his mother, and 
jack entered, smiling. 

“Now you boys probably know exactly 
how you would like to spend the day, if 1 
were willing,” said Mrs. Miller. “Tell me 
all about it and then I will give my answer.” 

Ralph looked at jack and jack at Ralph, 
as though wondering whether it would do. 
Ralph cleared his throat a couple of times. 

“ 1 don’t believe you ’ll let us,” he said, 
“but what we’d rather do is this, and Mrs. 
Flannigan will let her boys if you will 
let us.” 

“Are they listening at the door, too?” 
asked Mrs. Miller. 

Ralph grinned and began to feel more 
hopeful. “We would rather carry our 


256 The Millers and Their Playmates 

dinner,” he said, “ and sort of fool along as 
slowly as we want to until we reach Keys- 
ville— you know it is only four miles. 
Probably we would eat our dinner on the 
way somewhere. Then we ’d walk around 
Keysville, and maybe visit some of the stores 
and factories, and then — then — if you are 
willing that we should spend our money for 
it, we would like to come home on the four 
o’clock train. Of course we wouldn ’t do 
anything tough, or mix up with any rowdies. ” 

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Miller. 
“ 1 think 1 will let you go, only — hold on — 
wait a minute— don’t smother me with 
kisses — 1 want you to promise that you will 
telephone back your safe arrival by two 
o’clock. And 1 hope you will bring some 
trifle to Helen, so that she will not feel neg- 
lected. Even a bunch of pussy willows 
would please her.” 

When the kissing and shouting were 
over, the Flannigans were told, and Aurelia 
put up a luncheon in a shoe-box. At half- 
past eight they were off. 


The Wanderers 


257 

“O fellows,” said Jimmie, the quiet one, 
“aint it Just slick !” 

“ ‘Isn’t,' not ‘ain’t,'” corrected Patsy. 

“ Going by the road or on the track? ” 
asked Jack. 

“ 1 ’d rather go by the track,” said Ralph. 
“Then we can see all the trains pass, you 
know.” 

“ Got some pins we can lay on the rails ? ” 
asked Jimmie. 

“ ‘ Have you ’ not ‘ got ’ ”, corrected Patsy. 

“All right. Anyway so the pins are 
there,” said the good-natured Jimmie. 

“ Not a pin,” said the boys after a search, 
and Ralph added, “ Here are some pieces of 
copper wire in my pocket. They’ll do Just 
as well.” 

“ Come on, fellows,” said Patsy. “ Let ’s 
see how far we can walk down the track, 
before the nine o’clock comes along.” 

“1 can beat any of youwalking onthe rails,” 
announced Ralph. “ 1 walked a whole mile 
that way once without losing my balance. 
Gracious, but my ankles ached afterward ! ” 


17 


258 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ Better not try it again, sonny,” advised 
Patsy. "‘We wouldn’t care to carry you 
the other three miles to Keysville, and 
we would n’t like to have one of our crowd 
hobbling along with a couple of sticks for 
canes.” 

“St! There’s a chipmunk,” said Jimmie. 
“ Look at him go 1 ” 

“There’s a red squirrel after him,” cried 
jack. “No wonder he’s going. Squirrel 
can’t catch him, though. Wonder why 
they always fight so ? ” 

“Ho! What would Professor Harding 
think if he heard you say that ? ” remarked 
Patsy. “Guess he’d put you out of the 
Saturday Club.” 

“Don’t tell on me,” begged jack. “I 
know it’s because the squirrels are lazy 
and try to live part of the winter by 
robbing the chipmunks. 1 just didn’t 
think when 1 spoke. That is all.” 

“There’s another chipmunk over in the 
field,” cried Ralph. “See him on that 
stump? Now he’s going! Look at him 


The Wanderers 259 

limp. Got hurt some way. 1 believe I can 
catch him.” 

Like a flash Ralph dropped his lunch-box, 
climbed the fence, and went after the little 
creature. The other boys dropped their 
boxes and followed. The chipmunk was 
very lame, but managed to scramble along 
in some way in the same direction the boys 
had been taking. They kept gaining a little 
and at last surrounded him. Jimmie was 
the lucky boy who managed to catch him. 
He dropped his new straw hat over him and 
slid a broad shingle under that, one which 
they picked up in a fence-corner. 

“ There he is ! 1 got him ! ” exclaimed Jim- 
mie. “How, Mr. Chipmunk, we ’ll carry 
you right along with us.” 

“Can’t,” said Jack gloomily. “Couldn’t 
even if we had a cage. Don’t you re- 
member how we talked about such things 
in Saturday Club once, and decided that it 
was n’t fair to keep wild creatures for pets? ” 

“That’s so,” agreed the boys, “and we 
promised always to be fair to them.” 


26o The Millers and their Playmates 

“ Hold on, though,” said Ralph. “ There 
is something else to think about. Don’t 
you know how it told, in one of Professor 
Harding’s books, about an injured wild creat- 
ure not having much chance to get well, 
because some animal or other was sure to 
come along and eat him, when he was weak 
and could not get away ? That ’s just what 
will happen to this chipmunk if we leave 
him. Like as not before this time to-mor- 
row he won’t be anything but a lump in 
some big snake’s belly. 1 think he ’d rather 
be alive in a cage.” 

“That’s so,” said Patsy admiringly. 
“Tell you what, Jimmie, we might take 
him home anyhow, and then we could ask 
Professor Harding or Mrs. Miller, and see 
what they think about it. If they say it 
is n’t the square thing to keep him, we can 
let him go again.” 

“ That suits me,” agreed jimmie. “ Wish 
you fellows would hustle around and get 
something to put him in. He ’s wiggling 
around in there like everything, and I’m 


The Wanderers 


261 


afraid he’ll begin to gnaw my hat pretty 
soon.” 

“Wonder what we can get ? ” said Patsy. 

“ Dunno,” said jack. “ 1 ’ve been told the 
right thing is always around, if you ’re clever 
enough to find it.” 

The boys scattered in different directions 
to hunt for something, they did not know 
what. Jack suddenly disappeared from sight 
in a hollow of the field. When he arose he 
had an empty tomato can in his hand. “ 1 
found it!” he shouted, “just the thing! 
just cosey ! Pop him in there, and bend 
the top down again and stick it in your 
pocket. When you want to feed him, 
drop your food through the crack. That ’s 
his little window, you see.” 

“ Popping him in ’’did not prove to be so 
very easy after all, and Jimmie got his hand 
slightly bitten while doing it, but at last the 
chipmunk was safely stowed away, the hat 
was again on Jimmie’s head, and the big 
shingle was sent sailing high into the air. 
just as it fell, they heard the first morning 


262 The Millers and Their Playmates 

passenger train start from the Winthrop 
station. They had been too much inter- 
ested in other things to notice it before. 

“Hurry up and get the wires on the 
track,” cried Jack. 

“There won’t be time,” said the older 
boys. “ It would n ’t be safe. Keep them 
for the next train.” 

“ Let ’s get over the fence, anyhow,” cried 
Jimmie, and over they scrambled, Jimmie 
with the chipmunk, and the others empty- 
handed. In an instant the train came 
thundering along, the boys shouted and 
waved their hats, a friendly brakeman 
flourished his in return, and the colored 
porter grinned at them from a window of 
the parlor-car. The boys snatched off their 
hats and raced after the receding train. 
When they stopped running, they were far 
down the track. 

“Running gave me an appetite,” said 
Ralph. Then he looked dismayed. “ Where 
is our lunch ! ” he gasped. 

“ Way back where we dropped it when 


The Wanderers 


263 

we saw the chipmunk,” said Patsy. “ Now 
think of us doing that ! ” 

They rested a few minutes on the grassy 
bank beside the track and fanned themselves 
with their hats. “Two can get the lunch 
as well as four,” said Patsy. “ Let ’s draw 
cuts to see which go and which stay.” 

“No,” said Ralph. “Decide it the way 
Mother makes us decide things at home 
when we dispute about turns. She makes 
each of us stand on one foot in the middle 
of the room and far enough apart so that we 
can’t touch each other. We start together, 
and the first fellow to touch either his hand 
or his other foot to the floor has to give 
up.” 

Patsy and Jimmie looked much interested. 
“ Why does she do that ?” they asked. 

“ Oh, it ’s a dandy way,” said Jack. “ It 
makes you laugh so. When 1 was a little 
boy and we drew lots 1 used to be cross 
sometimes if 1 got the wrong one ; but 
when we have to stand on one foot we 
wobble around so that we get to laughing, 


264 The Millers and Their Playmates 

and then we ’re not cross a bit, are we, 
Ralph ?” 

“No, never,” said Ralph. “Sometimes 
we keep on trying to see which can hold his 
balance the longer, just for the fun of it, 
until we forget what we had been most 
ready to quarrel about before, or, if we re- 
member it, we don’t care to do it any more, 
anyhow.” 

“ Let ’s try it now,” said Patsy. “ The first 
two fellows who lose their balance have to 
go back for the lunch and the others wait 
here with the chipmunk.” 

Each boy chose a railroad tie on which to 
stand, and two stood on either side of the 
track, jack began giggling at once to see 
how solemnly Patsy and Jimmie went about 
it. Ralph laughed outright at Patsy’s face 
and then swayed, tried to regain his bal- 
ance, waved his hands wildly, and plunged 
forward. 

“Guess 1 am one to go,” he said. “ I ’ll 
sit down and wait for the other fel — Hello, 
jack! We ’re the ones, are we ? ” 


The Wanderers 


265 


Jack had laughed too hard and gone over 
before his brother was fairly seated. So the 
Flannigans and the chipmunk waited on the 
bank while the lunch-boxes were brought. 
One of the boxes was opened and some 
pieces of cooky broken off for the little pris- 
oner, but he gazed upward fearfully with his 
beady eyes, and refused to eat. 

“lam pretty hungry myself,” said Jimmie. 
“Now, you are not going to eat one 
mouthful before eleven o’clock, James Joseph 
Flannigan,” said Patsy, sternly. “ It ’s your- 
self that will be starving to death before 
the afternoon train if you do.” 

“ Aw, just one cooky,” begged Jimmie. 

“ Not a one,” answered Patsy, firmly, 
“ and by rights you should wait for the noon 
whistle. What do you suppose would be- 
come of the men on father’s gang if they 
ate whenever they felt like it? ” 

Mr. Flannigan was the foreman of the 
Winthrop section gang, and very much 
liked and respected by all the other rail- 
road men. All the year through he and 


266 The Millers and Their Playmates 

his gang were looking after the rail- 
road track and roadbed, keeping them safe 
and neat. The boys admired him greatly, 
and when Patsy spoke of him in this way it 
ended all teasing. 

“The gang will be along pretty soon,” 
said Jimmie. “ Father said they were going 
Lip toward Keysville, as soon as they had 
fixed one place the other side of the station ; 
shouldn’t wonder if 1 saw them now,” 
and he pointed to a black speck coming 
down the track. 

“ It surely is !” cried Ralph, as he made 
out the shape of the hand-car. 

“Yes, sirree!”said jack. “ Oh, but it 
must be fun riding on a hand-car. It looks 
so easy ! ” 

“It’s not so easy as it looks,” remarked 
Patsy, who had tried it. “ ’T is just a trick 
of walking with your arms, instead of your 
legs, while you are standing still.” 

The boys were hardly through laughing 
at Patsy’s description of working the hand- 
car when it came alongside of them. Mr. 


The Wanderers 


267 


Flannigan slowed down when he saw who 
the boys were. “Jump on, youngsters,” 
he said, “and we’ll give yez a lift.” 

The boys huddled closely together on the 
back end of the car, wishing that their 
lunches had been put into pails instead 
of boxes, so that they might feel more like 
real section men themselves. They started 
slowly, and then went faster and faster, 
until Ralph thought they must be going at 
regular express train speed. 

“1 wish this could last forever,” he said, 
looking over his shoulder at the working of 
the pumps. 

Mr. Flannigan heard it and laughed. 
“Not wid me at the pumps,” he said. 
“Whin are yez goin’ home?” 

“ On the four o’clock train,” replied Ralph. 

“ If yez thought yer mother would be 
willin,” Mr. Flannigan said, “yez cud go 
home on the car wid us, but we shall not 
rache Winthrop till six. We shall wurruk 
along here until dinner time, an’ thin go on 
beyant Keysville for a while.” 


268 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ Could n’t we telephone and find out ? ” 
asked Jack. 

“ Do that,” said Mr. Flannigan “ an ’ if she 
says yez may, jist be down at the railroad 
as soon as the foor o’clock thrain goes by, 
an’ we’ll pick yez oop, wherever yez are, 
whin we coom along.” 

“ I fear she will think it is too much 
bother for you,” said Jack. 

“Not a bit av it,” said Mr. Flannigan. 
“ An’ if it was, sure 1 ’d be glad to do it. 
She’s been mighty good to Patsy and 
Jimmie.” 

“You bet!” said Jimmie. 

So it was settled, and when the boys ate 
their dinner at noon, it was on a sunshiny 
bank with the section gang. Some leaned 
against the fence and some sprawled upon 
the bank, while across the track the red- 
winged blackbirds fluttered around among 
the rushes and pussy-willows of a swamp, 
and a meadow-lark sang from a maple. 
The men were rough in their ways, but 
kind, and the boys were perfectly happy. 


The Wanderers 269 

They heard stories of simple out-of-door 
life, and of some life that was not so 
simple. Mr. Flannigan told them how for 
three days and two nights of the recent 
heavy rains he and his men had neither 
gone to bed nor sat down to a table. 

“We wurruked in the wet as long as 
we cud,” he said, “ bankin’ up the worst 
washed-out places on the thrack an’ 
diggin’ ditches in new places to carry 
off the wather, an’ thin, whin wan av us 
cud n ’t kape awake any longer, he would 
jist drop down in the nearest shanty an’ 
slape a bit. They sint our food to us an’ 
we ate as we worruked.” 

“ I should n ’t think you’d want to work 
like that,” said Ralph. 

“ Want to ?” said Mr. Flannigan. “Want 
to ?” 

“ ’T is not the wantin’ to worruk that 
carries a man through. ’Tis the wantin’ 
to do his duty. If wan single shovelful 
av the earth 1 dug those nights had been 
missin’, a hull thrain might have been 


270 The Millers and Their Playmates 

wricked. Jist yez mind that, me byes. 
Ivery time annybody laves a part av his 
duty undone, ’t is bound to make throuble 
for somebody, an’ yez niver can till how 
big the throuble may be or how manny 
may share it.” 

“ Never ? ” asked Jack. 

“Niver,” said Mr. Flannigan, as he put 
the cover on his empty dinner-pail. “If 
there is wan thing I know better than anny 
other, ’t is that. Ivery railroad man 
knows that.” 

The boys were very thoughtful. Ralph 
said afterward that he never saw a red- 
winged blackbird without being reminded 
of Mr. Flannigan and duty. But in a few 
minutes they were off for Keysville, on 
foot this time, and how thoroughly they 
saw the town ! 

They drank from the public fountain, 
they stood in the door of the blacksmith 
shop, they looked into every store win- 
dow in town, and hung over the sill of the 
open printing shop windows to watch the 


The Wanderers 


271 


presses at work. But before they did 
any of these things they had telephoned 
to Mrs. Miller. The Keysville operator 
had been amused to hear their end of the 
conversation as they crowded around the 
telephone, all four boys taking part and 
Ralph beginning it. This was it : 

“Hello, is this mother? This is Ralph. 
We are here. Had a lovely time and ate 
it by the track. Caught a chipmunk and 
rode on the hand-car. Mr. Flannigan wants 
us to ride home with him on the hand- 
car, but he won’t get home till six. May 
we ? Oh, thank you. We are being 
good boys and having a fine time . . . 
So ’m 1 . . . So ’m 1 . . . So ’rn I. 
Did you hear those ? They were the 
other fellows. Good-bye ! Oh, 1 forgot 
to tell you. One of its legs was hurt 
and that is why. Good-bye.” 

They now had .their railroad fare to 
spend, and that took much thought. “ I’d 
like something for myself,” said Jack, after 
he had bought Helen a flve-cent handker- 


272 The Millers and Their Playmates 

chief, “some little thing, just for a sover- 
eign of the trip.” 

“Souvenir,” corrected Ralph. 

“All right, souvenir then,” said jack and 
purchased a five-cent Jews-harp. 

Ralph bought fancy red, white, and blue 
pencils for Helen and himself. Then the 
boys put all their remaining money to- 
gether, bought crackers and cheese for 
their afternoon lunch, and carried it down 
to the station. 

They saw the afternoon train pull in, 
take on passengers, and pull out again. 
When it was gone they started down the 
track towards Winthrop. Here Mr. Flan- 
nigan found them on the first high bank, 
sitting in a row and trying to see who 
could throw pebbles the straightest at a 
certain weather-beaten pine stump. 

The ride home was very delightful, es- 
pecially when, just as they reached the 
down grade leading to the Winthrop sta- 
tion, Mr. Flannigan let the boys help him 
work the pumps, while the men sat on 


The Wanderers 273 

the edges of the car and dangled their feet 
over. How important the boys felt then 1 
“ I tell you, Mother,” said Jack, in de- 
scribing it all to Mrs. Miller afterward, “ 1 
just felt as big as anything there for a 
while. It ’s been a lovely day and very 
exciting I ” 


CHAPTER XVI. 


PETS. 

AS soon as Patsy and Jimmie could get 
^ their morning tasks done, the day 
after their trip to Keysville, they took the 
chipmunk in their old bird-cage and started 
for the Miller house. 

“Going to knock at the back door?” 
asked Jimmie. 

‘ ‘ Guess we ’d better not, ” answered Patsy, 
who knew the ways of the family very 
well. “ Ralph says his mother is hurrying 
to get her book done and does n ’t like to 
be interrupted. We ’ll just sit down on the 
back steps and whistle. The boys will 
come if they are there, and if they ’re not, 
Aurelia will tell us pretty soon. I wish Mrs. 
Miller could see our chipmunk, but 1 don’t 
want to bother her.” 

274 


Pets 


275 


“We might kind of walk up and down 
with him in front of the library window,” 
suggested Jimmie, “and then maybe she’d 
see us and come out.” 

“ Uh-«A,” said Patsy, ‘ ‘ that isn’t business. ” 

A few minutes later two boys and a chip- 
munk were on the Miller back porch, and 
the neighborhood whistle-summons was 
heard on the clear air. Aurelia came to 
the door, her hands full of wet dish-towels 
to be hung on the line. 

“ For the land’s sake ! ” said she. “ What 
kind of a wild beast have you got now ? 
Looks a little mite like a baby tiger, only 
his stripes has got .skewed around.” 

“Why, this is a chipmunk, Aurelia,” be- 
gan Jimmie, carefully. Then he saw her 
eyes twinkle, and knew that he did not 
need to explain. 

“Why, so it is!” exclaimed Aurelia. 
“ How did you catch him ? ” She bent 
down to examine him more closely. “ Poor 
little critter ! ” she said, as she saw the in- 
jured hind leg. “Lame, ain’t he? 1 hope 


276 The Millers and Their Playmates 

you boys have n ’t been settin’ traps for 
squirrels an’ such like?” 

“Not much!" said the Flannigans together. 

“Probably some other fellow has been,” 
added Patsy, “and this chipmunk got hurt 
in one of ’em. We ’re going to take care ot 
him till he gets well, and then let him go, 
if he wants to. Has Mrs. Miller begun 
writing yet? We wish she could tell us 
what to do with him.” 

“Writing? No,” replied Aurelia. “Dr. 
Black came in to see her about something 
or other, an’ she ’s in the parlor with him. 
The boys have gone on an errand for me, 
but they ’ll be back soon. 1 guess Helen is 
over to Bertha’s.” 

Jimmie whispered to Patsy, who nodded. 
“Say, Aurelia,” said Jimmie, “do you think 
they ’d mind if we sat on the front steps, so 
that Mrs. Miller could see our chipmunk 
when she lets Dr. Black out ? ” 

“ Mind ? Not a speck,” answered Aurelia 
heartily. “Jest you set there quiet while 
you ’re waitin’, that ’s all.” 


Pets 


277 


That was how it happened that when Dr. 
Black stepped out on the front porch he 
found two boys and a bird-cage barring his 
way. “ What is this ? ” he said. 

Mrs. Miller followed him out of the 
door. 

“ It’s our chipmunk. He ’s lame, so we 
could catch him, and we ’re going to keep 
him until he gets well,” exclaimed Patsy. 

Dr. Black bent down to look more closely. 
“His leg is badly hurt,” he said. “You 
might better bring him up to my office and 
let me care for it.” 

Jimmie exclaimed, “ Oh, thank you ! ” 

Patsy murmured something about not be- 
ing able to afford it. 

“ 1 shall not charge anything,” said the 
doctor. “ Are you not the boy who drove 
that herd of cattle out of my garden last 
month and kept them from smashing my 
hot-bed ? 1 thought so. Well, you bring 
the chipmunk up at eleven and I will take 
care of his leg.” 

Then it was Patsy’s turn to say “Thank 


278 The Millers and Their Playmates 

you,” and look pleased. Jimmie whispered 
to him. 

“Please, sir,” said Patsy, “Jimmie wants 
to know if his leg will ever be all right 
again.” 

“No,” replied the doctor. “He will al- 
ways be lame, but he will be comfortable.” 

Dr. Black went away and Mrs. Miller 
took up the cage. “ You will have to care 
for him right along,” said she. “ He would 
soon be killed if taken back to the woods.” 

“ Honest ? ” asked Jimmie joyfully. 

“ Of course,” said Patsy, fiercely. “ Mrs. 
Miller never says any things that ain’t — are 
not — true.” 

“ He ’s mine,” said Jimmie, “and 1 ’d like 
to name him for you ma’am. Would you 
mind if I called him Christine ?” 

Mrs. Miller smiled. “That is a great 
compliment,” she replied, “but I think 1 
would prefer to have him called something 
else. What shall it be ? ” 

“If we had caught him up north,” said 
Ralph, who had just come up, “we could 


Pets 


279 

get one of the Indians to name him some- 
thing which means ‘ He has only three 
legs.’” 

“ Call him ‘Tripod,’” suggested Mrs. Mil- 
ler. “ A tripod has only three legs.” 

“ That ’s what we ’ll do !” exclaimed the 
Flannigans in one breath. “ Here, Tripey, 
Tripey, Tripey ! ” 

At eleven the two Flannigans, Ralph, 
jack, Helen, Robert Black, and Bertha 
Clarke solemnly climbed the stairs to Dr. 
Black’s office, Jimmie carrying Tripod in his 
cage. The doctor had not yet returned 
from his morning round of calls. It was 
the first time that any of the children, ex- 
cept Robert, had been up there, and they 
felt somewhat uncomfortable. In the first 
place, there was no window to the waiting- 
room. All the light came from a sky-light 
above them, and that seemed strange. Over 
in one corner of the room stood a queer- 
looking machine, which, Robert said, made 
electricity and gave it to ill people. Several 
charts on the walls showed how the heart, 


28o The Millers and Their Playmates 

lungs, and other organs are packed away 
inside the body. In a glass case, in another 
corner, were Dr. Black’s shining surgical in- 
struments, at which the children gazed with 
wondering eyes. They sat on the edges of 
chairs and couch, and talked in whispers, 
until Dr. Black came hurrying up the stairs 
and into the office. 

“Come into the other room,” he said, 
throwing open a door, and as the seven 
children tramped after him they looked out 
the open window and began to chatter. 

“ Do you doctor chipmunks very much?” 
asked Helen, gravely. 

“This is my first chipmunk patient,” re- 
plied the doctor. “ Perhaps, if 1 help him, 

I may have calls from some of his friends.” 

“ Will you have to hurt him very much ?” 
asked Jimmie. 

“Not at all,” answered the doctor. “1 
shall give him a little chloroform.” 

“And what ’s that ? ” said Jimmie. 

“Sure, it’s the stuff they used to put 
Maggie Flynn to sleep with, when they 


Pets 


281 


fixed her broken leg,” explained Patsy. “ If 
you breathe it for a little while first, they 
can cut off your head or anything, and not 
a bit do you know about it till you wake up 
afterward.” 

The doctor chuckled and carried the cage 
into the next room. In a few minutes he 
returned with the chipmunk lying quite still 
in his hand. Just what he did afterward 
nobody quite understood, but when he 
finished the little creature had a stiffly band- 
aged hind leg all encased in splints. Helen 
had held the limp little body in the right 
position while the doctor worked over it. 
The five boys had stood around, with their 
necks craned forward, carefully keeping back 
the scores of questions which they longed 
to ask, and saying only: “Look at that 
now!” “He doesn’t wiggle a bit!” and, 
“Bet you the doctor’s fixed more’n five 
thousand broken legs ! ” 

Not until the last bandage was fastened 
did anybody miss Bertha. Then she was 
discovered in the waiting-room, her hands 


282 The Millers and Their Playmates 

clutching the sides of the chair in which she 
sat, and her eyes so tightly closed that her 
face was all puckered and wrinkled by the 
effort. She would not open them until Dr. 
Black himself assured her that his work was 
done. 

“ I fink you were very foolish,” remarked 
Helen. “The chipmunk didn’t get hurted 
any because he breathed kelloriform. And 
it was nice to see how Dr. Black fixed him. 
1 fink kelloriform is a good fing. Bad 
children might take it when they have to 
be spanked.” 

“ 1 fear the spanking would not do them 
so much good then,” said Dr. Black, chuck- 
ling again. 

“ 1 should fink it would,” said Helen. 
“It did the chipmunk just as much good 
to have you fix his leg, even if you did n’t 
hurt him.” 

“You might see what your mother 
thinks about it,” suggested Dr. Black. 

“She isn’t the spanking kind,” said 
Ralph, “ I use to wish she was. When 1 ’d 


Pets 


283 


get into a scrape with the other fellows, 
they ’d get spanked up and be out having 
a dandy time, while 1 ’d have to stay shut 
up in my room.” 

Dr. Black laughed outright. “ 1 think 
that Mrs. Miller knows her business,” said 
he. “ Now take good care of the chip- 
munk, and let me know if the leg comes 
undone. I think he will let it alone be- 
cause it is sore. Good-bye ! You are 
welcome to my help. Good-bye 1 ” 

“ I fink your father is just lovely,” said 
Helen to Robert. “And I fink 1 will be 
a lady doctoress when I grow up.” 

“There’s the noon whistle!” cried 
Ralph. “We must hurry home to dinner. 
Let ’s have another look at Tripod. Begin- 
ning to kick a little, isn ’t he ? Guess 
Maggie and Lucinda will think they missed 
a lot by being gone into the country. 
Good-bye I ” 

After dinner Helen went over to Bertha’s 
again, and Ralph and Jack pottered around 
in the playhouse. The Flannigans were 


284 The Millers and Their Playmates 

over with their pet, and after a while it 
was less interesting than it had been to 
watch him. 

“ 1 ’m going to have a pet, too,” Jack an- 
nounced suddenly. “ Mother promised me 
last week that, if 1 wouldn’t make any 
fuss about not keeping the young adders 
Ben Stuart gave me, 1 could have a garter 
snake for a pet. 1 ’m going for one right 
now.” 

“Me too,” said Ralph, springing off the 
ground. “1 ’ll tell her, and then we’ll go 
down to the swamp.” 

The four boys spent an hour in the 
swamp, and found no snakes. They visited 
another swamp with no better luck. Then 
they went to one which was fully a mile 
and a half from their home. There jack 
found a snake and caught it with a forked 
stick. 

“How are you going to carry him?” 
asked Jimmie, hopping around on one 
foot. 

“In my hands, of course,” replied Jack, 


Pets 


285 


who was tired and warm and somewhat 
cross. “ Did you think 1 was going to stick 
him in my pocket or sling him over my 
shoulder ? ” 

“ Say, Jack, leave him there for a few 
minutes,” begged Ralph. “I’d like to 
get one, too, and 1 ’m sure there must be 
more of them around here.” 

“I’d rather go right home,” said Jack, 
“but if you’ll hurry I’ll wait here by my 
snake while you hunt, only don’t take 
time to fool around.” 

Jack squatted down beside his snake 
and examined the forked stick to make 
sure that it was not pressing him down 
too hard. The other boys spread over 
the swamp and beat the tufts of grass in 
their search. 

“ Whoopee ! ” cried Patsy at last. “ Here ’s 
a big fellow I Ralph ! Hurry up ! ” 

“ Where ? Where ? ” cried Ralph, rushing 
over the uneven ground as fast as he could, 
falling headlong once and picking himself 
up again. In his fall his stick was broken. 


286 The Millers and Their Playmates 

and he had to catch the snake with his fin- 
gers, something which he did quite easily, 
for he was very quick and agile-. As soon 
as he had the snake held firmly by the 
neck, so that he could not bite, Ralph was 
ready to go. Jack picked up his snake in 
the same way and the little procession 
started homeward. 

“ 1 should think you ’d want to get a 
snake while we ’re out here,” said Ralph to 
the Flannigans. 

“ Can’t keep one,” said Patsy shortly. 

“ Why not ? Won’t your folks let you ?” 
asked jack. “ Mother lets us once in a 
while, if we take very good care of them 
and let them go free in a few days.” 

“ My folks are different. They don’t like 
snakes and such things,” said Patsy. “ You 
know Irish people are not used to them, and 
they are a good deal more Irish than Jimmie 
and me — I mean Jimmie and 1.” 

“ Don’t you wish you could keep one ?” 
asked Ralph pityingly. 

“Nawl 1 don’t care now," said Patsy. 


Pets 287 

“You know we have the chipmunk. I 
think Tripod wouldn’t like a snake.” 

“The snake would like Tripod all right, 
would n’t he ? ” laughed Ralph. “ It would 
be like the tiger and the young lady.” And 
he began singing over and over again as he 
marched: 

‘There was a young lady of Niger 
Who went out to ride on a tiger. 

They returned from the ride 

With the lady inside 
And a smile on the face of the tiger.' ” 

“Ralph ! ” cried J ack. “1 wish you would 
quit singing that silly thing. 1 ’m sick of it !” 

Ralph, who was altogether too fond of 
teasing, began the verse again, dancing 
backward in front of Jack as he sang. 

“ Please don’t,” said jack. “ Please stop. 

I ’m tired and it makes me nervous 1 ” 

“There was a young lady — ” began Ralph 
again, but hit his heel on a stone in the 
road and went sprawling over backward in 
the dust. As he fell he loosened his grip 
on the snake, which landed on its back. 


288 The Millers and Their Playmates 

righted itself, and began to glide away to 
the ditch. Ralph scrambled to his feet, 
overtook the snake, and picked it up, but 
in his haste and confusion got bitten on 
his left hand. The other boys gathered 
around him. 

“Are you scared any?” asked Jimmie as 
he watched the blood ooze from the places 
where the snake’s teeth had gone in. 

“Not a bit,” said Ralph, who looked 
rather white. “ It hurts, but 1 ’m not scared. 
Mother says that garter snakes are not at 
all dangerous.” 

“just the same, 1 ’d want her to fix it for 
me as soon as possible,” said jack. “I’m 
sorry, Ralph. You may sing that song 
some more if it ’ll make you feel any better. 
1 can stand it.” 

“No, thank you,” said Ralph. “ 1 won’t. 
Guess it served me right for teasing you 
anyhow.” And so the accident stopped 
what might soon have been a quarrel. 

“Guess Mother ’ll be s’prised,” said jack, 
as they neared home. “ She was expecting 


Pets 


289 


only one snake, but she ’ll be glad of two, 
because they ’ll be company for each other. 
Let ’s carry them in and show her before 
we put them in their box. Then she can 
be getting things ready for Ralph’s finger 
while we fix their little home." 

The Flannigans stopped in the playhouse 
to look at the chipmunk, and the Miller 
boys rushed headlong in at the side door of 
their home, each trying to pass the other. 

“ Mother,” they cried," mother ! see what 
a surprise we have for you ! They ’re dan- 
dies, and they ’ll enjoy being together be- 
cause .” 

With these words they shot through the 
wide doorway into the sitting room— and 
found themselves in the midst of Mrs. Mil- 
ler’s literary club, with Mrs. Miller hurrying 
from one of the further corners of the room 
to stop them. 

“Oh, my gracious 1 ” said Ralph turning 
on his heel and getting out much faster than 
he got in. Jack bolted without a word, 
dropped his 'snake into a box as he passed 


19 


290 The Millers and Their Playmates 

through the side porch, and did not stop un- 
til he landed, panting, in the playhouse. 
Ralph had been captured by Aurelia, who 
attended to the bitten finger at once. 

The Flannigans were somewhat puzzled 
by the way in which Jack reappeared, and 
the peculiar redness of his face. 

“ Was your mother there ?”asked Jimmie. 

“Yes,” said Jack. 

“Was the surprise a success?” asked 
Patsy. 

“Yes,” said Jack grimly. “It was the 
biggest surprise 1 ever saw.” 

“ Did she like ’em ? ” persisted Jimmy. 

“She didn’t really say,” replied Jack, 
truthfully, “ but she sort of smiled. Now 
you fellows have a good time without me. 
I think I will go in and clean up. 1 ’m not 
coming out again. 

When the ladies left, the snakes were in 
their box on the side porch, but the boys 
were reading studiously on the front porch, 
dressed in their Sunday best, and spotlessly 
clean. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


THE CLOSING OF SCHOOL. 

'T'HE Winthrop school year always ended 
* about the middle of June, and on May 
first Professor Harding announced that at the 
closing exercises a prize would be given to 
the pupil of each grade above the fourth 
who had prepared the best essay about 
either a tree or some little wild creature. 
Professor Harding would not say who had 
offered the prizes, and he would not say 
exactly what they were. 

“Each prize,” he announced, “will be 
something that any boy or girl would be 
glad to receive. Beyond that, 1 cannot tell 
you.” 

At recess that day nothing else was talked 
about. Most of the children felt that it 
would be useless to try, but when they had 

291 


292 The Millers and Their Playmates 

talked it over with their teachers at least 
half a dozen in each grade were willing to 
make the effort. You may be very sure 
that every member of the Saturday Club 
was planning to do so. For over two years 
the club had held its meetings regularly, and 
a more wide-awake group of boys and girls 
was not to be found in the State. Meetings 
were usually held indoors in the winter and 
out-of-doors in warm weather, although 
once Professor Harding had taken the Club 
for a mid-winter tramp, over country roads 
and through wood lots, where they hunted 
for tracks in the freshly fallen snow. 

That had been one of the pleasantest 
meetings the Club could remember, although 
Maggie Flynn had always insisted that it 
should have been called a “going,” instead 
of a “ meeting.” A soft snow had fallen the 
night before, and still clung to all the trees 
and wayside weeds. And how many of the 
brown weeds there were ! 

Professor Harding suggested their carry- 
ing home a winter bouquet made of one 


The Closing of School 293 

sprig or branch of each kind of tree, shrub, 
or weed which gave food to the winter 
birds, and you would have been surprised 
to have seen what a large and interesting 
bouquet it made. 

Besides this bouquet, they had found a 
whole handful of cocoons of various sorts, 
which they carried to their different houses 
to keep until spring. Certainly the Club 
had been a great success, and since it was a 
year old it had had a great deal of influence 
among the other children. Air-guns were 
still used, but seldom to kill birds in Win- 
throp. Cats were not chased and stoned, 
and dogs no longer dodged away from the 
sight of certain small boys. 

The members of the Club felt very sure 
that they knew who was offering the prizes, 
but when they hinted as much to Mrs. Mil- 
ler she laughed and shook her head. “1 am 
not the person,” she said. “You must guess 
again.” 

The night after the announcement had 
been made, Lucinda and Maggie were walk- 


294 The Millers and Their Playmates 

ing home from school with their arms 
around each other’s waists. “Are you go- 
ing to try for a prize ? ” asked Maggie. 

“Yes,” said Lucinda. “ I am going to try 
writing about the Charter Oak, if I can find 
out enough about it. 1 have a book that 
tells a good deal. What are you going 
to take ? ” 

“1 don’t know,” said Maggie, gloomily. 
“ 1 had thought of the Charter Oak myself, 
and 1 suppose we could both take it, since 
we are in different grades, but perhaps 1 
will take a bird or a bug instead. There is 
Patsy. Let’s ask him.” 

“ Me,” said Patsy. “Oh, I’m going to 
take Tripod, if Jimmie does n’t want him. 
He is getting to be cuter than ever. He will 
take food from my fingers every time, and 
he knows his name for sure.” 

That ended all talk of essays for a while, 
and the chipmunk was brought over to the 
Flynn back garden to show off his little 
tricks. His cage was set upon a huge old 
pine stump, near the poultry house, and the 


The Closing of School 295 

hens’ supply of corn was taken from, grain 
by grain, until the chipmunk had eaten all 
he could and had his cheeks stuffed full 
of other kernels. The last that was given 
him he turned over and over in his thin 
little claws for a few minutes, and then 
tucked away under the mass of cotton which 
lined his sleeping-box in the corner. 

“ We are going to let him run all around, 
as soon as the bandage is taken off his leg,” 
said Jimmie, who had come up quickly be- 
hind the others. “We darse n ’t yet, for fear 
he ’d get caught. We keep his cage out of 
doors, though, all day.” 

“This makes a good place to set it,” re- 
marked Patsy. “ Maggie, how much will 
you take for this stump ? ” 

“ Humph 1 I guess Mother would like to 
give it away if anybody would take it,” was 
the reply. “She said last year that she 
could have raised about a dozen more 
cabbages with this out of the way. 

“ It would make a lot of firewood, if any- 
body had the patience to cut it up,” said 


296 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Ralph, who had just come over with jack. 
“That is the kind of wood we brought in 
for that poor family of Smiths last winter, 
jiminy, but this is a whopping big stump ! 
I never thought much about it before.” 

“1 wonder how old it is,” said Lucinda. 
“Let ’s count.” 

All six began at once counting the rings 
which show the age of a tree. They counted 
aloud, and in about two minutes were 
hopelessly mixed. 

“ We could do better if we had some way 
of marking where we stop,” suggested the 
practical Ralph. “ Somebody get some 
pins, and we ’ll stick one in at each fiftieth 
ring. Then if we lose our count we ’ll go 
back as far as the fiftieth pin, and try 
again.” 

Maggie ran into the house and reappeared 
with a cushion. “ Go ahead,” she said. 

Lucinda, who was very careful and exact, 
pointed to the rings, while all counted clearly 
and slowly together. One pin was stuck in 
at the fiftieth ring, another at the one hun- 


The Closing of School 297 

dredth, and a third at the one hundred and 
fiftieth. It grew very exciting. 

“ 1 do hope it will reach two hundred,” 
exclaimed Maggie. 

Lucinda’s smooth . voice went steadily 
on. “One-fifty-one, one-fifty-two, one- 
fifty-three.” 

“ Bet you it does,” said Jimmie, under his 
breath. 

“ Sh ! ” said Patsy, fiercely. 

The children leaned farther and farther 
over the stump, while the chipmunk, set 
aside in his cage and forgotten for the time, 
busied himself with taking the corn from 
his cheeks and hiding it under the cotton. 

“ Two hundred ! ” said Lucinda, excitedly. 
“ Somebody hand me a pin ! 1 ’m afraid to 
get it myself for fear I’ll lose my place. 
There! Now, we’ll go on. . . . Two 
hundred and fourteen rings ! Oh, my ! ” 

“When did it start growing?” asked 
Ralph. “Two hundred and fourteen from 
eighteen hundred and ninety-five is how 
much ? Four from five is — four from five 


298 The Millers and Their Playmates 

is — oh, somebody tell me how much four 
from five is, anyhow ! ” 

“ Hold on a minute,” said Patsy. “My 
father once told me that the pine was cut 
off from this land in eighteen-eighty, so you 
must subtract from that, instead.” 

“ Why ?” asked Jack. “Oh, yes, I see. 
Because it stopped growing then. Here are 
pencil and paper, Ralph.” 

“ Sixteen hundred and sixty-six ! ” ex- 
claimed Ralph, a minute later, “just think 
of it, though! Why, there couldn’t have 
been any white people at all here then 1 ” 

“See here, boys and girls,” said Maggie, 
solemnly, “ 1 have found the subject for my 
essay. It ’s me own mother’s stump, and I 
surely have a right to it.” 

“That’s what you have,” agreed Ralph. 

Lucinda was carefully pulling the pins out 
from the stump and replacing them on the 
cushion. 

“ 1 should say you had a right to write 
all right," remarked Ralph, who enjoyed 
making puns. 


The Closing of School 


299 

“ Be sure to use your right hand,” added 
Jack, who did not very clearly understand 
the meaning of a pun, but wanted a share 
in the fun. 

“1 tell you what,” said Maggie, “ifl 
get a prize for writing about this stump, 
let ’s all bring our supper out here some 
night and have a stump party.” 

“ 1 ’ll stump you to,” said Patsy. 
***** 

When the last day of school came there 
was great excitement in the grades. There 
were the usual dialogues and recitations, 
songs by the children, and in the upper 
grades a few recitations. The last num- 
bers on the program in each room were 
the prize essays, and, after the visitors had 
gone, all the pupils were to come to- 
gether in the big high-school room to see 
the prizes bestowed by Professor Harding. 

Not only the winning essays were men- 
tioned, but all that had been submitted 
were listed on the board. Maggie Flynn 


300 The Millers and Their Playmates 

had won a prize for her essay, “The Story 
of a Pine.” Lucinda had been praised for 
her paper on “The Charter Oak.” Ralph 
had written about a pair of robins that 
nested inside the open fire-box of an old 
traction engine. 

“That is a good essay,” Professor Hard- 
ing had said, after looking it over, “ but, 
Ralph, it seems to me that you have said 
considerably more about the engine than 
about the birds. 1 fear this will be barred 
out from the contest.” 

“ Dear me 1 ” Ralph had exclaimed. “ So 
1 have ! You see there really was such 
a nest, but 1 became so interested in the 
engine. It was a different type from any 
1 had seen before. Well, anyhow. I’ve 
had enough fun out of poking around that 
engine to pay me for my time.” 

Jack had asked his mother’s advice as 
to a subject and been told to choose what- 
ever he knew most about. “1 guess it 
will have to be garter-snakes, then,” he 
had said. “ 1 am just full of garter-snakes 


The Closing of School 301 

these days.” That was the title of his 
essay — merely “ Garter-Snakes.” 

Patsy wrote about “Our Chipmunk,” 
Jimmie started several essays, beginning 
with one on “Mushrats,” and ending with 
one on “ Quales,” but each time he be- 
came discouraged and put his pages in the 
kitchen stove. 

Two of the prizes fell among the Millers 
and their most intimate playmates, one to 
jack and one to Maggie Flynn. Mr. and 
Mrs. Miller planned to attend the exercises, 
and good Mrs. Flynn ironed until nearly 
twelve the night before in order that she 
might get away without disappointing any 
of her customers. 

On that warm Friday afternoon the school- 
rooms were crowded. The boys looked 
very stiff and proper in their best suits, and 
the girls were all in thin white dresses with 
bows of bright ribbon on their braids, 
jack’s essay on “ Garter-Snakes ” was not 
very long, nor was it perfect in spelling, 
but he had managed to find out and tell 


302 The Millers and Their Playmates 

so many things which his hearers did not 
know about these quiet iittie creatures, 
that he had fairiy earned his prize. 

Maggie Fiynn’s essay was ionger than 
any other written by a pupii of her grade, 
and was much enjoyed. One of the pieas- 
antest things about it was the way that 
Maggie showed her interest in the tree of 
which she had written. Her eyes shone 
and her face fairiy giowed as she read. 

This was the essay: 

“the story of a pine. 

“ The pine tree 1 want to teii about started 
in our back garden in sixteen hundred and 
sixty-four, it was not our back garden 
then, partiy because we were not born and 
partiy because it was not a garden at aii. 
The country around here was just one great 
pine forest, such as we never see now. The 
oniy peopie were the bands of indians, who 
sometimes came through on their way 
from one camp to another. These were 
Ojibway indians. 


The Closing of School 303 

“The very beginning of the tree was a seed, 
which grew with a lot of other seeds in a 
cone on the mother tree. The squirrels ate 
many of the seeds, but this one dropped to 
the ground and got covered with a little 
earth. After a while it began to grow, and 
it was so tiny that, if a deer or any other 
wild creature had stepped on it then, it 
would have been killed. But it was lucky 
in not being stepped on. 

“ When this tree was a baby, there were 
very few white people who lived in this 
country, and they lived way down east. 
There was n’t any United States at all,— only 
just the colonies that we learn about in our 
history. One book that I saw says that 
1666 was the year when they had the Great 
Fire in London. The tree will help me to 
remember that, even if it was on the other 
side of the world. 

“ When the tree was little it had branches 
near the ground, but as it grew older these 
dropped off. They did so because they had 
not enough light. And the tree had to keep 


304 The Millers and Their Playmates 

stretching up and up to get its share of light 
from above, so it did not grow much out 
sideways. If it had grown alone in a field 
it would have kept more of its branches, in- 
stead of dropping them. Its trunk kept 
growing, though. Every year it grew some, 
and now you can tell how old it was by 
counting the rings on the stump. There 
is a ring for each year. Some years it 
grew more than others, and that was be- 
cause it had the kind of weather that was 
best for it. But it grew some every year 
and did the best that it could under the 
circumstances. 

“ As soon as it was big enough and strong 
enough, it began to grow cones of its own, 
and then the squirrels came to its branches 
and nibbled the cones and ate the seeds. 
There were raccoons here, too, and all sorts 
of birds to perch on its branches. And 
down on the ground were bears and deer 
and wolves and foxes and wolverenes and 
wild-cats and the same little creatures that 
live in the country around here now. 


The Closing of School 305 

“This tree grew its leaves in little bunches 
of five green needles. That proved that it 
was a white pine, because the white pine 
grows a needle for each letter in every 
bunch, w-h-i-t-e. 

“ At last a white man passed near the tree. 
He was a missionary, travelling with the 
Indians. They never camped under the 
tree, because it was too far from water and 
people who are as wise as Indians always 
camp near water. No more white men 
came for a long time. Then some came 
who brought their families and built houses. 
They cut down trees to build them and 
made log cabins. But this tree was too big 
to be used that way, so it was allowed to 
stand. 

“ When the children who lived in the log 
cabin played out of doors, they had to stay 
near home for fear of bears and wolves. The 
people made all of their sugar from maple 
sap, and got all their fruit from wild berry 
bushes. Most of their meat came from the 
bears and deer which the men killed. And 


20 


3o 6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

the tree kept on growing just the same, 
even if things were different around it. 

“ By and by men came and built a railroad 
near the tree, and after it was done the 
engines sent great puffs of smoke up into 
its branches. Soon more men came and 
put up saw-mills, and then the pine tree 
saw the other pines around it cut down and 
carried to the mill to be made into lumber. 
At last it was cut down and sawed up and 
sent away on the cars. I don’t know exactly 
what became of the lumber. It may have 
been used in houses, or in barns, or in 
bridges. They used to use pine for lots 
more things than they do now because 
they could get it more easily. 

“After the stump had stood in the open 
field for several years, and the bark had all 
rotted and fallen off from it, a Mr. Robins 
built a house near it and lived there a while. 
And then some other people lived there and 
then my mother and I came there to live. 
And the stump has not lived there, because 
the stump is dead, but it has stayed there. 


The Closing of School 307 

Pine stumps last for fifty years, because they 
have so much resin in them, and 1 hope this 
will last until 1 am grown up. Perhaps then 1 
won’t mind having it pulled out and burned, 
but now 1 like to keep it, and count the 
rings and think about it. 

“ It is too bad that the tree has no child- 
ren living near, and sometime 1 am going to 
plant a little white pine near it, for a re- 
minder and to give pleasure to other people 
when 1 am far away. ” 

When Maggie finished reading her essay, 
the applause was long and loud. Mrs. Flynn 
smiled and nodded to her, and told a neigh- 
bor in a loud whisper: “Sure, the child is 
fair crazy about trees of late. I can’t be 
thinking what has got into her at all at all. 
She used to be clane agin essays.” 

When the prize-winners came together in 
the high-school room to receive their re- 
wards, their teachers, parents, and a few 
particular friends followed until all the seats 
were full. Professor Harding made a 


3o 8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

short speech, in which he did not tell who 
gave the prizes, and then handed them 
around. 

It seemed almost as though the prizes 
must have been chosen after the committee 
had decided who were to receive them, for 
Maggie had a book about trees, beautif^ully 
printed and full of fine pictures. Jack re- 
ceived a pocket microscope which he had 
long been wanting. The other children had 
books, butterfly nets. Jointed fish poles, and 
other things which delighted their hearts. 
After handing out the prizes, Professor 
Harding spoke a few words more. 

“ 1 am glad to put these gifts into your 
hands,” he said. “ Use them often and use 
them carefully, so that you may have last- 
ing pleasure from them. Live out of doors 
all you can, and learn to understand what 
you see. Get all the happiness you can in 
this way, and help to keep the world as 
beautiful as you found it. 1 wish you all 
a happy summer vacation, and hope to see 
you often during it. Remember that 1 like 


The Closing of School 309 

to hear about the interesting things which 
you have seen.” 

Here a tiny girl in one of the front seats 
raised her hand. “ 1 saw Jack’s pet snake,” 
she said. “It was a little bit of a snake, 
but it had a vurry long tay-al ! ” 

Professor Harding laughed, and so did 
everybody else, but he caught the child up 
and set her on the table. “This little girl 
will be a naturalist yet,” he said. “That 
was very interesting about the snake. 
Now, good-bye, everybody. Vacation has 
begun.” 


CHAPTER XVIIl. 


THE JOURNEY NORTH. 

S soon as school closed, the Millers be- 



gan to make ready for their summer 
at Pencroft, Mrs. Miller’s cottage at Trelago 
Point, some two hundred miles north of 
Winthrop. For a while they had talked of 
renting the cottage and spending the sum- 
mer at home. Work was going on rapidly 
in the new house and Mr. Miller had to be 
there much of the time. It was certain 
that he could not spend many days at Pen- 
croft. And this year Aurelia had a husband 
and a mother-in-law and Lucinda to plan 
for. It was really quite a puzzle. 

In the end it was settled that Aurelia, 
Lucinda, and Mr. Hathaway should go north 
with Mrs. Miller and the children, and sleep 
in a tent on the beach, while Mr. Miller 


The Journey North 31 1 

should remain at home until some week 
when he could be spared for at least a Sat- 
urday and Sunday with his family. Mrs. 
Miller was to return once during the warm 
weather to look over the new home. 

“It all seems so strange,” said Ralph, 
“and so different from the way we have 
always done before.” 

“Always?” asked his father. “Let me 
see, how many seasons have you had at 
Trelago Point, my son ?” 

“ One,” replied Ralph. “ Is n’t one enough 
to make an ‘always?’” But he knew 
what his father meant, and stopped putting 
on airs. 

“We are going in a different way, too,” 
said Mrs. Miller. “ This year we shall start 
after supper, reach Westlake at nine, and 
spend the night at the hotel, taking an early 
morning express north from there. At Mill 
City we shall take the morning steamer, 
just as we did last year. This way of travel- 
ling will let us take all of our railroad trip 
in the cool part of the day.” 


312 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Goody!” cried Helen, clapping her 
hands and dancing up and down in the 
middle of the room. “ Goody I We ’ll sleep 
in another hotel. Do you get tings in every 
hotel by poking a place in the wall ? And 
will you let me do the poking part of the 
time ?” 

“Yes,” promised her mother. “You may 
press the button for the first thing we need. 
But remember,” she added, pretending to 
be very stern, “you must not carry any 
kittens in your satchel this time.” 

Everybody laughed, recalling the trouble 
that Helen’s unlucky kittens had made the 
year before. Jack whispered loudly to Ralph 
that they might tuck some garter-snakes 
into their satchels. Then he looked up at 
his father with twinkling eyes. 

“You might better not,” said Mr. Miller. 
“ It will take so much of your time to catch 
food for them, that you will have no time 
for anything else if you do.” 

Then began busy times for everybody. 
Fishing tackle was collected and packed ; 


The Journey North 313 

the bathing suits were hunted up ; butterfly 
nets were repaired ; Jack’s new microscope 
was boxed for the trip ; and a new assort- 
ment of books and games was added to the 
other diversions for rainy days. Helen 
dressed and re-dressed the one doll that she 
was to carry with her, and explained repeat- 
edly to the others why they had to remain 
behind. Nebuchadnezzar had to be told 
many things also, and warned that he 
must surely stop chasing birds if he 
wanted to move into the new house in the 
fall. 

And Lucinda ? You know that Lucinda 
had always lived very quietly. In fact, her 
one trip to Longfield with the Millers was 
the only time she had ever been on a rail- 
road train. Now she was greatly excited, 
and it was well that she had not been told 
of the plan until after vacation began. She 
coaxed Aurelia into buying her a bathing 
suit and a soft cap for boating. One other 
thing which she wanted was a satchel, and, 
after talking it all over with Mrs. Miller, 


314 The Millers and Their Playmates 

Aurelia had unwrapped Mrs. Shaw’s satchel 
and given it to the eager child. 

“Use it an’ be happy with it,” she said. 
“ 1 guess your grandma ’d like to have you 
gettin’ the good of it somehow, and ’t ain’t 
as though it was a veil or a thin apern that 
you ’d swish out in no time.” 

Lucinda looked very sober for a few min- 
utes ; then remembered from how much 
pain her grandmother had escaped, wiped 
her eyes, and went about her packing. This 
was almost five days before they were 
to start, and she repacked the satchel nine 
times within those five days, each time 
making some slight change in the contents. 

Mr. Miller insisted this year, as he had 
done before, that the house and garden 
should be left in perfect order, and that the 
children should help as much as possible 
during the last busy days. Hoops and hoop- 
sticks, bats, and all such impracticable out- 
of-door playthings, had to be gathered into 
the playhouse and locked up. The croquet 
set had to be taken up and stowed away and 


The Journey North 315 

missing balls found in the shrubbery, where 
they had rolled from sight. Mr. Miller had 
suggested that the boys make a list, to pre- 
vent forgetting anything, but they were 
sure that they could remember without it. 
Lucinda had to help Grandma Hathaway 
move her possessions over to Mrs. Flynn’s, 
where she was to have the one spare room 
for the summer. 

And oh, the questions that were asked 
during that last day ! Aurelia stood it 
until eleven o’clock, and then she said to 
Jack; “jest as sure as you ask me one 
more question before dinner, 1 will stop 
cookin’ anything for you. 1 can’t use my 
strength to answer you an’ feed you both, 
an’ I ’m terrible drove with work.” 

Then the children took all their questions 
to their mother, and asked, “Why did you 
do that ? ” and “ Why don’t you do this ? ” 
until that poor lady was well-nigh distracted. 
Mr. Miller came to help her. 

“ If your questions are important,” he 
said, “write them neatly and put them in 


3i 6 The Millers and Their Playmates 

a box on the dining-table, and I will answer 
them at noon, but now you must go out 
of doors and stay out. Have you done all 
your work there ? ” 

“Every single thing,” insisted the three 
children, and left. Of course they did not 
write out their questions, because that 
meant too much work for them ; and then, 
the questions would look so silly on paper ! 

They were to take the seven o’clock 
train, and at half-past four o’clock were 
called in to bathe and dress, before having 
an early supper. The boys were chatter- 
ing away in their room when Jack suddenly 
cried, " Ralph 1 1 never took those old tins 
to the dumping ground !” 

“ Why, jack !” exclaimed Ralph. “Why, 
Jack ! And Father said particularly that you 
were to do it, and we told him solemnly 
that we had everything done.” 

“1 know,” said Jack, with a scarlet face. 
“They were out in the barn-yard and 1 
did n’t see them, so I forgot. 1 ’m going to 
do it now.” 


The Journey North 317 

“You can’t,” objected Ralph. “You won’t 
have time. Father won’t let you.” 

“I’m going to do it,” said jack. “ You 
go right on getting ready. You try to make 
noise enough for two boys, so they won’t 
miss me and get worried, and 1 ’ll just rush. 
1 ’ll go without my supper, if 1 have to, but 
1 ’d feel mean to leave those cans where 
they are. 1 ’d rather go hungry one night 
than to feel mean all summer.” 

As he spoke jack was putting on the old 
clothing which he had just then removed, 
and now he slipped down the back 
stairs and out of doors. The wheel- 
barrow was noiselessly taken to the barn- 
yard, and the old tins loaded in as quickly 
and quietly as possible. Then jack peeped 
through the barn-yard gate to make sure 
that nobody was looking, and started for 
the dumping ground as fast as he dared 
to go. Once a rough place in the walk 
sent some of the cans rolling into the 
ditch, but, on the whole, he was very 
lucky. When he crossed the railroad a 


3i 8 The Millers and Their Playmates 

train had just passed. “Good thing for 
me!” he muttered. “If I’d had to wait 
for that, I don’t know what I would have 
done 1 ” 

To Ralph the minutes seemed like hours. 
He began to wonder what would happen 
if jack were late, too late to get properly 
dressed. Would Mother let him travel in 
his old clothes ? Would she make him stay 
at home with Father ? Or would she make 
them all wait until the next day ? It was 
a dreadful thought, and Ralph’s mouth be- 
came dry and his lips felt stiff when it 
ocurred to him. It seemed to him that his 
heart stopped beating for a minute, and after 
that it thumped harder than ever. 

“ Ralph,” called his mother from the foot 
of the stairs, “are you attending right to 
your work ? You know that sometimes you 
and Jack get to playing.” 

“We are not playing now,” answered 
Ralph, quite honestly. “ Please don’t worry 
about us.” 

Then he looked out of the window again 


The Journey North 319 

for Jack. There he was, away down the 
street, coming on the run and pushing the 
empty barrow in front of him. Ralph sprang 
to get everything ready for his brother — hot 
water in the tub, a dry towel on the rack, 
and all his clean clothing laid out in order 
on the bed. He saw him slip into the 
garden, wheel the barrow to the barn, and 
then run for the back door and the 
staircase. 

“O jack. I’ve been so anxious!” cried 
Ralph. “1 began to think you would be 
left to-night, and 1 didn’t know what we 
could do if you were.” 

“ It ’s just five,” said Jack, hurrying off his 
waist so fast that the buttons made a pop- 
ping sound as they slipped through the 
button-holes. “ I’ll be ready ’n half ’n hour, 
see ’f 1 ’m not.” 

He was, but he had never hurried so in 
all his life, and Mrs. Miller, hearing the 
quick steps on the floor over her head, 
decided that her boys must have played for 
a while after all. Ralph helped in every 


320 The Millers and Their Playmates 

way he could, and when Aurelia called 
“ Supper ! ” two very clean and happy boys 
came romping down the stairs to enjoy 
their bowls of brown bread and milk. 

The four children were allowed to ride to 
the station on the drag that carried the 
trunks, each sitting on one and feeling very 
lofty and dignified. On the way down they 
heard the whistle of an incoming train. 

“ Oh,” cried Lucinda, almost ready to 
jump from the dray. “There’s the train 
this minute ! Do hurry the horses and 
we’ll ask the conductor to wait for the 
grown-ups.’" 

“ Now, you jest set right still where you 
was. Sissy,” said the stout drayman. “ That 
there is only the hog train, and you know 
what that is. It takes all sorts of freight an’ 
live stock exceptin’ folks. It ’s got to fool 
around the tracks here considerable before 
your train comes along.” 

Lucinda settled back onto her trunk with 
a sigh of relief, but when she reached the 
station she refused to go inside, preferring 


The Journey North 


321 


to stay out where she could watch the rest 
of the party coming down the street. Helen 
spent her time in examining a weighing 
machine in the waiting-room. Ralph and 
Jack visited with Maggie Flynn and the Flan- 
nigans, who had come down with Grandma 
Hathaway to see them off. 

When the train pulled in, three grown 
people and four happy children climbed the 
steps and made their way into the cars. 
Mr. Miller waved them a good-bye from the 
station platform; Maggie darted toward the 
open car window and urged Lucinda to write 
to her; Jimmie, overcome by a sudden gen- 
erous impulse, darted after Maggie and gave 
Helen a beautiful red toy balloon, which 
he had purchased only that afternoon 
from a pedler; Patsy stuck his hands a lit- 
tle deeper into his pockets and whistled, to 
show that he did not wish to go, and then 
said, “Well, good-bye, everybody! We’ll 
take care of the town for you till you get 
back.” 

“ All aboard 1 ” shouted the conductor, the 


322 The Millers and Their Playmates 

wheels began turning, and— they had really 
started north. 

At Westlake there was a ride in a dimly- 
lighted, noisy, jolting omnibus, and Helen 
was so sleepy that she almost tumbled off 
from Mr. Hathaway’s lap. The other child- 
ren were tired, and Jack winked very, very 
slowly, but they sat bolt upright, and tried 
to see as much of the city as possible while 
pitching along through its streets. 

The boys had a room to the right of Mrs. 
Miller’s and opening into it. Helen and 
Lucinda had a room to the left, which also 
had a connecting door. The little girls were 
quite overcome by the idea of having an 
hotel room to themselves. Helen awakened 
enough to claim her mother’s promise. 

“ May I poke the wall for some ice- 
water ? ” she asked, as soon as they were 
all upstairs. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Miller, “you may press 
the button.” 

“ In my own room ? ” asked Helen. 

“Yes.” 


The Journey North 323 

“With the door sort of shut between, 
so it will look as though we ’re travelling 
alone?” persisted Helen. 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Miller, smiling down 
into the happy face before her. 

“ May 1— may 1 press the button for 
something, too?” asked Lucinda, timidly. 

“ You may in the morning, when we need 
help about carrying down the bags,” replied 
Mrs. Miller. 

“ Hurry up, Lucinda,” said Helen, running 
back into their room and closing the door 
after them. “ Now 1 am going to ring. . . . 
Would you dare if you were 1 ?” 

“ 1 — 1 guess so,” faltered Lucinda, sud- 
denly feeling that it was a bold thing 
to do. 

“I’m going to, ’’announced Helen. “There! 
I ’ve done it. . . . My, how long it takes 
him to come ! . . . There 1 I hear him on 
the stairs now. . . . You ask him — I ’m 
scared ! ” 

Lucinda shook her head and the bell-boy 
tapped on the door. Helen opened it. 


324 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“Please bring me a pitcher of ice-water,” 
she said, with dignity. 

“ Here it is, ma’am,” said the bell-boy, a 
tall negro, walking in and filling an empty 
pitcher on the stand. As he closed the 
door after him in leaving, Helen turned 
proudly to Lucinda. 

“Did you hear him call me ‘ma’am’?” 
she said. “ 1 was n’t scared a bit at 
last.” 

Ten minutes later Lucinda and the little 
“ ma’am ” were tucked in bed and told not 
to speak a single word before morning. In 
the other room, the two boys stopped right 
in the middle of a whispered conversation, 
as Mrs. Miller turned out the lights. 

“Only, Mother,” Ralph had begged, 
“ may we get up in the morning and dress 
ahead of the rest, if we are awake and will 
be very quiet ? ” 

“No,” replied his mother promptly. “You 
are not to touch your feet to the floor until 
you are called. If one of you awakens early 
he is not to arouse the other fellow.” 


The Journey North 325 

“ All right,” said Ralph, but he thought it 
rather hard. 

At five the next morning the night clerk 
tapped upon their door. Ralph heard the 
sharp tapping and dreamed that it was a 
red-headed woodpecker. Jack did not dream 
at all or even hear it. The clerk tapped again. 

“That is only a telegraph pole,” mur- 
mured Ralph, without moving. “You’d 
better hunt for a tree.” 

The clerk tapped again. 

Ralph opened his eyes. “ I ’m up,” he 
cried. “ You need n’t tap again. I ’d have 
answered sooner, only 1 thought you were 
a woodpecker.” 

Ralph shook Jack and said, “ Wake up ! 
We ’re in a hotel and have to get dressed 
for the train.” 

Jack tumbled out before his eyes were 
open and landed against the dresser. Mrs. 
Miller called softly to know whether they 
were up, and then went to help the little 
girls. 

At a quarter before six, the porter. 


326 The Millers and Their Playmates 

called by Lucinda, carried the bags down 
to the omnibus, and the party followed. 
After a long ride in the gray light of the 
early morning, past the quiet houses and 
over the misty river, they reached the 
other station and waited there a few min- 
utes for their train. 

When it came thundering in, they were 
all hurried aboard, for it was an express and 
stops were short. The dining-car would 
not be open until seven, and they ate their 
breakfast from the neatly-packed boxes 
which Aurelia had made ready in Winthrop. 
It did taste so good! 

“ It seems to me these boiled eggs have a 
speshual flavor,” said Jack. 

“ Lemon or vanilly ?” asked Aurelia from 
across the aisle. 

“Neither,” replied jack, who knew that 
she was making fun of him. “ 1 think it ’s 
Just Pencroft! ” 

“ Maybe it is the North Country Express,” 
suggested Ralph (that was the name of their 
train). “A few cinders might have come 


The Journey North 327 

in through the window and been mixed 
with the pepper and salt you put on them.” 

It was the first time that any of the chil- 
dren had ever had such an early ride on a 
train, and they found it delightful. The 
country through which they passed was 
beautiful with rivers and forests, and all the 
fields were fresh and green. Comfortable 
looking farm-houses appeared here and 
there, big barns also, and animals grazing in 
the pastures. Once in a while the whistle 
of the locomotive made the children look 
more sharply still, as they dashed through 
some small town without even slowing 
down. At such places somebody was gen- 
erally on the station platform, waving a 
good morning to the train-crew. 

“ Do you know what 1 fink ? ” said Helen. 
“1 fink that, excepting the men at the sta- 
tions, fings are pretty much like the place 
where the Sleeping Princess was. You know 
everyfing was asleep around where she lived 
until the Prince came.” 

“That is so ! ” exclaimed the boys. Lu- 


328 The Millers and Their Playmates 

cinda, who had never happened to hear 
the story of the Sleeping Beauty, looked 
somewhat puzzled. 

“Now, look at those horses we ’re coming 
to,” said Jack, excitedly. “You might al- 
most think they were asleep in the King’s 
pasture, just the way that they stood grazing 
when the Princess fell asleep.” 

At that moment the horses kicked up their 
hind feet and went running wildly away 
from the approaching train. 

“ We must be the Prince coming to wake 
them up,” said Ralph. “We made a good 
job of it that time surely.” 

After seven the little towns looked more 
as the children were used to seeing them, 
and they grew impatient to reach Mill City 
and take the steamer. Mrs. Miller suggested 
that they make up a game of some sort to 
pass the time. There were very few pas- 
sengers in the car, and they could have as 
much room as they wished. 

“There is a game,” she said, “the name 
of which I have forgotten, which is played 


The Journey North 329 

by people sitting on opposite sides of the 
car and watching for certain objects. We 
might arrange a game of that sort and make 
up the rules ourselves.” 

After a little changing around Ralph and 
Helen took a double seat one side of the car, 
and jack and Lucinda a double seat on the 
other. Each had pencil and paper, and the 
score was to be kept until they saw the first 
smoke-stack of Mill City. Then those who 
had the higher score for their side of the 
train were to be called the winners. Each 
cow or horse seen was to count one ; each 
flock of sheep or drove of hogs was to count 
five; and the other objects counted were: a 
windmill, four; a lake or pond, ten; and a 
station, fifteen. Rivers they decided not to 
count at all, because they wound and turned, 
and crossed and recrossed under the track 
so often that there was danger of making 
mistakes in the record. 

“I think,” said Ralph, “that this is the 
most interesting — cow 1 That gives us the 
first count ! ” 


330 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“1 don’t care,” said Lucinda. “It won’t 
take us long to catch — a span of horses ! 
There now ! We’re ahead of you.” 

“Windmill! Windmill!” cried Helen. 
“ How much did you say that would be ? 
Four ? Oh, goody 1 ” 

“We’re whistling for a station,” cried 
Ralph. “ Hope it’ll be on our side.” 

“ I think it will be on ours,” said Lucinda, 
and sure enough it was. 

It was a very interesting game. It was so 
interesting, in fact, that people farther back 
in the car put down their books and papers 
to watch the fun. Once in a while Mrs. 
Miller motioned the children to speak more 
softly, but usually they were very careful. 

Aurelia, sitting in the seat back of 
Lucinda and Jack, watched Lucinda hap- 
pily. “ Ain’t it the queerest thing, Fred,” 
she said to Mr. Hathaway, who sat beside 
her, “ain’t it the queerest thing, the way 
she came to us ? Why, I more ’n half 
expect to wake up every minute an’ find 
it all ain’t so ! When I came home with 


The Journey North 331 

the Millers from Trelago Point last year, 
1 was jist a lonely woman, an’ felt dreadful 
middle-aged. Now I’m goin’ back, ten 
months later, feelin’ as young as I ever did, 
an’ with a good husband, an’ with a dear 
old lady for a mother, an’ with Lucinda for 
our little girl.” 

“ Forgotten something, have n ’t you, Au- 
relia ? ” asked Mr. Hathaway. “ You are 
coming from a home of your own, even if it is 
a little one and you are not in it all the time. ” 

“No,” said Aurelia. “1 ain’t forgot it. 
Maybe 1 did n’t speak of it, but 1 never forget 
it. An’ the new one Mr. Miller is havin’ 
fixed for us over his new stable is goin’ to be 
terrible cosy, and so much handier. Sakes 
alive 1 When 1 think of it 1 most wish we 
were goin’ back, this minute, to move in. If 
there ’s one thing 1 like better then house- 
cleanin’, it is movin’, an’, though 1 ’ve done a 
pile of it for other folks, I never did any 
for Aurelia Shackleton.” 

“This will be for Aurelia Hathaway,” re- 
marked her husband. 


332 The Millers and Their Playmates 

“ What ?” said Aurelia. “Oh, yes! Did 
you ever see anybody so stupid ? I ain’t 
learned my own name yet.” 

The next stop which this train makes," 
announced the brakeman, “is Mill City, 
steamboat landing! Passengers for the sta- 
tion please keep their seats." 

“Oh!” said Lucinda, catching her first 
glimpse of the blue waters of the bay, and 
wondering if a certain large white object, 
which she saw for a second between two 
buildings, could possibly be the steamer. 
The game, which a minute before had been 
so interesting, was now entirely forgotten. 
Everybodystood to arrangethe hand-luggage 
and take deep breaths of the fine, fresh air. 

Helen went to a window near the door 
and gazed out of it in quiet contentment. 
The boys, satchel in hand, both chattered at 
once and pointed in bewildering fashion 
right and left as they tried to show and de- 
scribe everything to Lucinda at once. She 
nodded and smiled, and nodded again, but 
looked for only one thing, the steamer. 


The Journey North 


333 


“ Oh, there it is ! ” she cried, as the train 
stopped. “Do you remember two years 
ago, when you were out at Grandma’s farm, 
and we played that the lumber wagon was 
this very boat ? 1 never dreamed that it 
was like this.” 

The steamer was whistling to hurry the 
passengers along, and the children raced 
ahead of the rest. Mrs. Miller tried to keep 
up with them, but Mr. Hathaway and Aure- 
lia had much to carry and followed more 
slowly. 

“Hello, Captain Morse!” cried the little 
Millers. “This is Lucinda Shaw. She’s 
coming, too. May we go right straight to 
the upper deck ? ” 

The good-natured captain laughed and 
nodded. On the upper deck a pleasant- 
faced woman suddenly arose and waved 
her handkerchief to Mrs. Miller, who ex- 
claimed, “There is Mrs. Vanderlip now ! ” 

Ten minutes later the steamer was headed 
for Trelago Point, Pencroft, and the healthy, 
hearty out-of-door life in the woods. High 


334 The Millers and Their Playmates 

in the bow were the little Millers and their 
party. 

“Oh,” said Lucinda, for the fiftieth time. 
“Isn’t it lovely!” 

“You just wait,” said the little Millers. 
“You just wait and see what else is going 
to happen 1 ” 

But that is another story. 









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